Week #1: 100 Days of SQL Optimisation

How Small Tweaks Transformed Our Queries, Saving Time and Resources

Think of each SQL query like a high-stakes puzzle. At first, you might try every piece, hoping something fits. But with the right strategies, indexing, filtering, and window functions, you solve it faster, with everything snapping perfectly into place.

The data used in the examples below comes from IMDb's Non-Commercial Datasets¹, which offer a wealth of information about movies, ratings, and metadata. These datasets are ideal for practising SQL, as they include real-world data that presents various challenges for efficient querying.

In this post, we dive into week one of our 100-day SQL optimization journey.

Day 1: Basic Data Retrieval Optimisation

Goal: Retrieve the top 100 movies by rating from the title_basics and title_ratings tables.

Details: