January 2020 Summaries

In Part 2 of SQL Essentials, we discuss advanced SQL functions such as CASE shortening, exclusivity and order, using LIKE better, summing booleans, use window functions to deduplicate, ignoring NULLS in a window function, marking past events, and knowing your dialects. These topics cover various techniques for handling structured data more efficiently and effectively.

This article provides an introduction to some basic but essential SQL functions, assuming the reader has a basic knowledge of SQL. It covers topics such as understanding the order of operations in SQL statements, aliasing tables for readability and usability, using Common Table Expressions (CTEs) for cleaner code reuse and readability, and making better JOINs with concepts like NATURAL JOIN and USING keyword. The article emphasizes that these beginner concepts have many nuances that are not necessarily evident to casual users of SQL, and understanding them can significantly improve one's SQL game.

Automated data integration is crucial for digital agencies as it helps them connect the dots across various marketing and non-marketing data sources, providing clients with real-time measures of campaign performance. Fivetran's automated data integration tool removes the pipeline engineering burden from digital agencies by centralizing all client marketing and non-marketing data into any cloud data warehouse, continuously syncing data from every source, adjusting to source API and schema changes, detecting and replicating custom objects, and seamlessly integrating with BI tools. This enables agencies to optimize campaigns, create real-time ROI reports, develop reliable forecasts, and generate comprehensive insights into customer behavior and the customer journey.

Automated data pipelines can significantly aid marketing teams in achieving their objectives such as precise customer targeting, accurate lead attribution, and maximizing return on investment (ROI) from campaigns. By automating the data integration process, marketers and data teams no longer need to worry about data engineering, as data is seamlessly centralized into a cloud data warehouse for analysis. This enables marketing teams to create highly targeted advertising campaigns, generate real-time ROI reports, develop reliable forecasts based on customer behavior insights, and optimize their marketing programs, products, and services. Many companies have successfully utilized automated data pipelines to reduce data engineering costs and gain a comprehensive view of the customer journey.

Fivetran is a cloud ecosystem that partners with warehouse providers and BI platforms to enable businesses to create their choice data stack. By centralizing data using Fivetran, companies can gain more holistic insights and answer pressing business questions. Some of the interesting ways in which Fivetran has helped customers join data include consolidating paid media reporting for an ecommerce client, understanding campaign costs by platform, visualizing user engagement by source, and blending together cloud NetSuite data with on-premise SQL Server data. These partnerships enable businesses to automate the ELT process, generate insights from their data, and make more informed decisions.