Cloudera Launches Modern Big Data Analysis with SQL on Coursera

At a time when machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence capture an outsize share of media attention, jobs requiring SQL skills continue to vastly outnumber jobs requiring those more advanced skills. Influential data scientists often point to SQL as the most important yet underrated skill for anyone who works with data. SQL is today - and will remain for the foreseeable future - a vital foundational skill for a wide range of data professionals working in different roles across different industries.

Furthermore, as the popular tools and techniques used in deep learning and other advanced areas undergo rapid churn, threatening to devalue your investments in training, SQL remains a remarkably stable learning target. Even as modern SQL engines evolve to be capable of querying ever larger and more diverse datasets, the essential concepts and fundamental syntax of SQL queries remains largely consistent over time.

Educating Data Analysts at Scale
Cloudera is pleased to announce, in partnership with Coursera, the launch of Modern Big Data Analysis with SQL, a three-course specialization now available on the Coursera platform. This sequence of courses teaches the essential skills for working with data of any size using SQL. It offers opportunities to learn and practice using both traditional RDBMSs (like MySQL and PostgreSQL) and large-scale distributed query engines (like Hive and Impala).

By partnering with Coursera, we’re broadening our training reach and better meeting the needs of individuals seeking professional development opportunities and organizations building data-driven businesses.
The sequence of courses in this specialization is distinguished by high-quality materials, carefully designed assessments, and direct relevance to data professionals. Created based on Cloudera’s experience of what works in practice for our most demanding customers, these courses and the associated certification prepare learners for the real-world data challenges facing large organizations today.

This specialization is designed to provide excellent preparation for the Cloudera Certified Associate (CCA) Data Analyst certification exam.

What We Teach
The Modern Big Data Analysis with SQL specialization consists of three courses:

1. Foundations for Big Data Analysis with SQL, teaches the conceptual foundations of relational databases, SQL, and big data. After taking this course, you’ll understand how databases provide structure to data and how this has changed as the volume and variety of data have increased. You’ll compare operational and analytic databases and learn what differentiates a modern distributed data warehouse.

2. Analyzing Big Data with SQL, provides an in-depth look at the clauses of the SELECT statement, the one part of the SQL language that’s essential for doing data analysis. You can use SELECT statements to query data of all sizes across numerous different systems. This course teaches general skills that apply to all of these systems, but the emphasis is on distributed SQL engines like Hive and Impala that can query extremely large datasets.

3. Managing Big Data in Clusters and Cloud Storage, teaches how to manage big datasets, how to load them into clusters and cloud storage, and how to apply structure to the data so you can run queries on it using distributed SQL engines. You’ll learn how to choose the right data types, storage systems, and file formats based on which tools you’ll use and what performance you need.

A fourth course, Advanced SQL for Big Data Analysis, is currently in development and will be added to the specialization when complete.

How to Enroll
To start taking the courses in this Specialization, go to the Modern Big Data Analysis with SQL Specialization page on the Coursera platform and click the link to enroll. This specialization is designed to provide excellent preparation for the Cloudera Certified Associate (CCA) Data Analyst certification exam.

Ian Cook develops data science and machine learning courses for Cloudera.