What are good resources for learning basic T-SQL for non-programmers?

Question

Some of our clients want to do their own reports and lack the necessary knowledge.

What are good free resources for learning basic T-SQL? What resources do you recommend to your clients and others wanting to start with SQL?

Update:

I totally agree with Cruachan, it's better not to do it. We usually don't go down that road and know very well that users will probably try, try and fail and we will eventually have to fix all the mess they have created.

But in this situation I have a user that is capable of doing basic "selects" over views and I'm looking for a cheat sheet or something similar for him, since he will not be doing SQL everyday and will need a reminder for the basic syntax like top, count etc.

Answer 1

I've found the W3Schools site to be very informative and basic. It even helps people who have been doing it a few years...

Answer 2

SQL Server Central is an awesome resource. It requires registration but has lots of very informative articles walking through how to do various common(and not so common) SQL tasks.

Answer 3

I don't, I really don't. Teaching non-developers SQL is a nearly always a dangerous mistake. I say nearly always because in some circumstances you might be lucky to identify a user who has some aptitude for programming who can be educated up to a role where they can create ad-hoc reports and functionality of the type you imply. You can generally identify such people in an office because they'll be the ones who the others ask for help when they have computer problems. Often they'll have coded up macros in spreadsheets and other automation tasks. Taking these people under your wing and helping them out can be a great way of solving the problem.

However, you have to tie down level of access they have to the database so they cannot do any damage. A cloned reporting database is generally a good idea. Ideally on a separate server.

Why? because the best, most well intentioned, non-professional is more than capable of screwing up a database if given unlimited access. Even with just select access a couple of inadvertent cross-joins on large tables can bring a server to it's knees. If they then hit the on-off switch because they think that's needed you can end up with some very messed up server software.

The problem is solvable however. Generally when faced with this sort of situation I will do the analysis and create a set of friendly user-facing views that present the data in the format that the users will most likely want to see. I then give the users access to these views only and ideally via a reporting tool. This can be a commercial application or something custom-built that performs basic filter and join operations.

The point is that you're users are not really asking you how they can learn SQL (indeed I'd get a bit worried if my clients started asking me about T-SQL design, it would imply I'd been discussing tech with them and not how tech can be applied to their business situation). The question they are really posing is how can we create ad-hoc reports without calling on you to do them all the time and they've got a bit hung-up on SQL because that's how you've told them you do it. You need to take a step back and address the real business need, not the superficial question

Answer 4

I ran into an issue like this some time ago, after talking with our client we proposed a solution based on Analisys Services. (Using cubes.) This has the advantage that reporting is very flexible and the customer remains in control on which data dimentions they want to alalyze.

This is certainly easier then letting your customer learn T-SQL or other database techniques. Most of the time this leads to disappointment and/or inaccurate information on reports.

Answer 5

If you're looking to give your clients a way to generate reports and run their own queries, there are some visual report designers out there that will allow them to build reports using a GUI. Korzh.com has some web and forms-based visual query designers for end users.

Answer 6

I know that you asked for free resources. Yet a good book will save you a lot of time. I'd recommend T-SQl Fundamentals by Itzik Ben-Gan