SQL post on data science central

I came across an interesting post on data science central that can be found here.

Have to say that I do think that SQL, at least the basics, are very easy to get to grips and really most people can do it. Developing packages or stored procedures or even just complex bits of SQL is much trickier. Personally I don't find it that hard once I have visualised the query and data in my head I can whip things together in know time. The reason though that I say it is tricky is that I have a lot of first hand experience at teaching or at least helping other develop their SQL abilities. 

The things that people struggle with really surprised me and include:

• Difference between joins and unions!
• Getting the syntax correct 
• general joins
• grouping data
• Even advanced people struggle with analytical functions

But from a very basic and beginners point of view it is very simplistic and almost enough as:

I want customer names from the customers table where they are older than 60.

Becomes 

select forename, surname from customer where age >= 60 

The article does raise some interesting point but I would say that I think that SQL is one of the easiest languages with which to pick up the basics and be able to do some easy data extractions. In recent times I have also learnt that knowing SQL seems to be becoming a standard skills and the world is losing a space for specialist database developers, especially those that just know SQL server or Oracle, a wider range of skills is required.