Free online courseIntroduction to MySQL

Course Description

If you want to understand how modern applications store, organize, and retrieve information, MySQL is a great place to start. This free online course gives you a hands-on introduction to working with relational databases, helping you move from basic concepts to real tasks you can apply in websites, internal tools, and data-driven projects.

You will learn how a database is structured, why table design matters, and how smart choices like using the right data types support data integrity, accuracy, and performance. As you practice creating databases and tables, you will also see how to safely edit or remove structures without risking valuable information, building the habit of thinking before running commands that can have irreversible consequences.

From there, the course focuses on working with real records: inserting data, searching with SELECT queries, updating existing entries, and removing what is no longer needed. You will strengthen essential SQL skills such as joining tables to combine related data, as well as using techniques to retrieve unique values and compute summaries like averages and minimum or maximum values. These are the building blocks behind reports, dashboards, search tools, and everyday business queries.

Beyond database commands, the course bridges MySQL with web development through PHP using mysqli. You will see how a web app can read and print database results in HTML, insert data from forms, run searches with wildcards, and perform updates in a controlled way. Along the way, you will also cover safer patterns such as prepared statements, sanitizing variables, and validating form inputs, all of which reduce the risk of common web security issues.

Finally, you will understand core administration practices such as creating and managing user accounts, assigning privileges responsibly, and generating backups for restore and recovery. By the end, you will be ready to work confidently with MySQL in a lab environment, communicate clearly about database tasks, and take your next step toward roles that rely on SQL and backend fundamentals.