Guided Project: Answering Business Questions Using SQL

Last updated on May 26, 2025 at 2:52 PM

About this Webinar

In this hands-on Project Lab, Dataquest’s Senior Content Developer, Anna Strahl, will guide you through how to answer critical business questions using advanced SQL queries.

You’ll step into the role of a data analyst at the Chinook record store, leveraging your SQL skills to extract and analyze data directly from the store’s database. By the end of the session, you'll know how to write complex SQL queries, optimize query performance, and turn raw data into actionable business insights.

This project is ideal for learners comfortable with SQL, including writing complex queries with joins, subqueries, set operations, and aggregate functions.

What You'll Learn:

Advanced SQL Queries: Write and optimize complex SQL queries using joins, subqueries, and aggregate functions.
Data Analysis: Apply SQL techniques to extract insights and answer key business questions.
Business Decision-Making: Turn data insights into actionable recommendations for the Chinook record store.
Real-World SQL Techniques: Strengthen your skills in using SQL for practical business analysis.

Key Skills Covered in This Project:

Writing and optimizing advanced SQL queries with joins, subqueries, and set operations.
Querying SQLite databases to extract and analyze data.
Structuring SQL queries for better readability and efficiency.
Interpreting and presenting data insights to support business decisions.
Leveraging SQL for comprehensive data analysis

Note: This is a premium project that has been opened up for free to all webinar participants from May 16–23.

New to SQL? Start with our SQL Fundamentals to build the foundational skills needed for this project.

Before You Start: Pre-Instruction

To make the most of this project walkthrough, follow these preparatory steps:

1. Review the Project

Access the project and familiarize yourself with the goals and structure:

Start the project here

2. Access the Solution Notebook:

You can view and download it here to see what we’ll be covering:

Solution Notebook

Helpful Tips

New to Markdown? We recommend learning the basics to format headers and add context to your Jupyter notebook: Markdown Guide.
For file sharing and project uploads, it is important that you create a GitHub account ahead of the webinar: Sign Up on GitHub.

Want to work offline?

1. Set Up Your Workspace

We'll work with a basics.ipynb file, which can be rendered in the following tools:

Jupyter Notebook (local installation required)
Google Colab (browser-based, no installation needed)

2. Download the Resource Files

To follow along with the webinar, you would require The Chinook database which is provided as a SQLite w database file called chinook.db