SQLskills Learning Paths

SQLskills offers a large number of unique, practical, and real-world SQL Server courses that you can use to advance your career. This page will help you understand the best courses to watch/attend and in the most appropriate order. Whether you’re starting out a new career as a SQL Server data professional or you’re a DBA having worked with SQL Server for years, SQLskills can help you advance your career!

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For details on all classes including curricula, costs, and testimonials see here

Read about our comprehensive Learning Paths on this page.

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Just Starting out as a SQL Server Data Professional?

New to SQL Server or wanting to learn from the ground up as a Junior or “Accidental” DBA? Our Immersion Event for the Accidental and Junior DBA is a great place to start! Read the full details and agenda for IE0 which includes over 32 hours of contento

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If you’re ready to start and want to learn a bit more about how the system works to help you better troubleshoot and design transactions, we recommend that you continue your education by following IE0 with IETLB. Then round out the series with our IEQuery course. These three courses will give you insight into solving common performance problems around transactions and queries.

IE0: Immersion Event for the Accidental and Junior DBA (32:18:59)
IETLB: Immersion Event on Transactions, Locking, Blocking, Isolation, and Versioning (13:15:55)
IEQuery: Immersion Event on Fixing Slow Queries, Inefficient Code, and Caching/Statistics Problems (11:15:02)

Together, these three courses form our SQLskills Jumpstart program.

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Just Starting out as a Data Professional but Also Want to Understand the SQL Server Azure Ecosystem?

Follow the Jumpstart program and ADD our Immersion Event on Azure SQL Database, Azure VMs, and Azure Managed Instance. Read the full details and agenda for IEAzure which includes over 22 hours of content.

When combining the SQLskills Jumpstart Program with our IEAzure course, our recommended order for completion would be:

IE0: Immersion Event for the Accidental and Junior DBA (32:18:59)
IEAzure: Immersion Event on Azure SQL Database, Azure VMs, and Azure Managed Instance (22:30:22)
IETLB: Immersion Event on Transactions, Locking, Blocking, Isolation, and Versioning (13:15:55)
IEQuery: Immersion Event on Fixing Slow Queries, Inefficient Code, and Caching/Statistics Problems (11:15:02)

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Starting out as a Data Professional but Wanting to Learn Even More!

If you have the time to learn and want to deep-dive into some important focused topics that teach you how to use QueryStore, design for Very Large Tables, and index using ColumnStore indexes, you could include the remainder of our Short Courses to your Jumpstart+ Program. Additionally, we’d recommend that you consider watching some of our complementary courses on our development-training partner: Pluralsight. We do consider these more focused short courses as intermediate / advanced and would recommend them after the first three (IE0, IETLB, and IEQuery) and as well as at least one of our Pluralsight courses listed below. Ideally, you may even take a bit of time working with SQL Server first.

IE0: Immersion Event for the Accidental and Junior DBA (32:18:59)
IETLB: Immersion Event on Transactions, Locking, Blocking, Isolation, and Versioning (13:15:55)
IEQuery: Immersion Event on Fixing Slow Queries, Inefficient Code, and Caching/Statistics Problems (11:15:02)
Indexing for Performance on Pluralsight (7:11:00)
IEVLT: Immersion Event on Very Large Tables: Optimizing Performance and Availability through Partitioning (13:51:39)
IECS: Immersion Event on Columnstore Indexes (10:39:42)
IEQS: Immersion Event on Solving Common Performance Problems with Query Store (9:47:43)

Together, we offer the six SQLskills Immersion Events listed here as our SQLskills Jumpstart+ program.

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DEVELOPERS: You Are a Developer Who Works with SQL Server and Wants to Know More About Better Design as Well as Tips and Tricks!

The more a developer knows about SQL Server specifics, the better they will be with coding, performance, and even lessening their code’s impact on system availability! There are a series of SQLskills courses as well as our courses on our partner Pluralsight that will help you on your way to significantly better development. The best learning path would be:

SQL Server: Why Physical Database Design Matters on Pluralsight (3:56:00)
IETLB: Immersion Event on Transactions, Locking, Blocking, Isolation, and Versioning (13:15:55)
IEQuery: Immersion Event on Fixing Slow Queries, Inefficient Code, and Caching/Statistics Problems (11:15:02)
SQL Server: Optimizing Ad Hoc Statement Performance (7:15:00)
SQL Server: Optimizing Stored Procedure Performance (7:10:00)
SQL Server: Optimizing Stored Procedure Performance – Part 2 (3:13:00)
IEVLT: Immersion Event on Very Large Tables: Optimizing Performance and Availability through Partitioning (13:51:39)
IECS: Immersion Event on Columnstore Indexes (10:39:42)
IEQS: Immersion Event on Solving Common Performance Problems with Query Store (9:47:43)

Together, we offer the five SQLskills Immersion Events listed here as our SQLskills Complete Short Course program.

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PERFORMANCE TUNING: You ARE a SQL Server Data Professional but Need to Know More About Performance Tuning?

Our two courses IEPTO1 and IEPTO2 form the best foundation for every SQL Server data professional. Our most common comment after students attend these courses is “I wish I had taken these sooner!” We’ve actually had people say that the indexing content has “changed their [SQL Server] life!” Honestly though, these are our most popular courses for a reason; they are intense, they are focused, and they are HIGHLY VALUABLE and PRACTICAL. You will walk away with a tremendous foundation for performance tuning, troubleshooting, and effective configuration for a variety of different scenarios.

IEPTO1: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning and Optimization – Part 1 (43:17:40)
IEPTO2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning and Optimization – Part 2 (40:00:55)

Together, these two performance tuning courses make up our SQLskills Performance Tuning program!

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Optionally, if you do a lot of development work, you can also review these Pluralsight courses:

SQL Server: Optimizing Ad Hoc Statement Performance (7:15:00)
SQL Server: Optimizing Stored Procedure Performance (7:10:00)
SQL Server: Optimizing Stored Procedure Performance – Part 2 (3:13:00)

SQL Server Professionals: You ARE a FOCUSED SQL Server Data Professional Wanting to Excel and Build Your Future with SQL Server!

You want it all; you want your SQLskills Blackbelt. This is our most demanding set of content and will take most people months to complete all the courses. To achieve your Blackbelt, a SQL Server professional has to have watched/attended more than 150 hours of deep-technical SQLskills training across a variety of disciplines with primary focus on performance tuning and troubleshooting as well as appropriate design and configuration from an on-premises SQL Server to an Azure VM | MI (and know when each is appropriate) to Clustering and AGs to designing for VLTs (very large tables) and optimizing both OLTP and Decision Support / Relational Data Warehousing. To receive the verifiable badge, IEPTO1 and IEPTO2 must be on SQL Server 2019 and at least half of the remaining courses must be on SQL Server 2019 as well. Read more about the SQLskills Blackbelt badge here.

IEAzure: Immersion Event on Azure SQL Database, Azure VMs, and Azure Managed Instance (22:30:22)
IEPTO1: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning and Optimization – Part 1 (43:17:40)
IEPTO2: Immersion Event on Performance Tuning and Optimization – Part 2 (40:00:55)
IEQS: Immersion Event on Solving Common Performance Problems with Query Store (9:47:43)
IECAG: Immersion Event on Clustering and Availability Groups (18:07:27)
IEVLT: Immersion Event on Very Large Tables: Optimizing Performance and Availability through Partitioning (13:51:39)
IECS: Immersion Event on Columnstore Indexes (10:39:42)

Together, we offer these seven SQLskills Immersion Events listed here as our SQLskills Blackbelt program.

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Questions?

If you have any questions, please check our comprehensive F.A.Q. page.