Show HN: SQL Police Department – Learn SQL while solving crimes | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SQL Police Department – Learn SQL while solving crimes

sqlpd.com

550 pointsdoronlinder86 comments

Worth considering capturing the keyboard input. I instinctively hit "delete" partway through to delete something I had clicked on and it took me back to HN and I lost my progress.

Good call. I will.

Deployed a fix. Backspace is captured now.

do you ever actually use backspace to go back a page? If not, turn it off in your browser settings, since you'll only ever use it accidentally anyway. (And what's more, you'll only ever use it accidentally while you're trying to edit text you've input.)

to me backspace going back a page = a sense of frustration. better to turn it off in the browser, so I did so.

Good call. I use ⌘-← all the time to go back but never backspace

This reminds me of the SQL Murder Mystery: https://mystery.knightlab.com/

This was certainly an inspiration.

For other reasons, reminded me of Space Quest: https://spacequest.fandom.com/wiki/Sequel_Police

Didn't know about that. Now I am a great detective! That was fun!

This is just like the real world because with the first example I have no idea what the deliverable should be or what data is available.

It's almost too immersive.

Nice concept but I really hate clicking on the buttons to form my statements... Is it possible to allow typing? Also, not ending my statement with a semicolon feels incomplete.

I agree. I work in Microsoft's SQL Server (incl. variations, e.g. Azure SQL DW) quite a bit. Based on my experience, I am the only person using semicolons in T-SQL.

I always try to use them. It's going to be mandatory says MS:

"Although the semicolon isn't required for most statements in this version of SQL Server, it will be required in a future version."

That has been the guidance for a loooooong time.

I agree with this. I would much prefer if there was a freeform query mode, where I could just type the queries without the buttons or hints.

I was trying to determine how to use a comma.

Yeah, the semicolon bothers me too. I'll see how I can incorporate that in. The clicking around was meant to make life easier on mobile phone users. I'll see if I can add a keyboard support without undermining this.

This makes a lot of sense, actually. Definitely great for learning.

You could do it the way Duolingo does it - on desktop, it allows for "Hard Mode", where it lets you type the responses freely. On mobile however, it doesn't let you do that (unless you're using the app).

Yes! Part of learning a language, for me, is gaining muscle memory with my fingers and having to use a mouse is a turn off. Very cool site otherwise!

Pretty cool! One piece of feedback: > An illegal site's servers were siezed in a recent operation. Please submit all users number of posts' details. Please make sure there are no duplicates.

There's no declaration of what attribute should be used for considering distinct users. After guessing it gave a hint to the effect of "there are duplicate Given Name values". This is rather counter intuitive since many people share a given name.

It's a neat concept. I think the experience would be way better if the the animation after submitting answer would be made way faster.

I checked the network tab in firefox 75 on fedora and the post was instantaneous, about 40 ms to reply (120 if included TLS negotiation). However there is after that an animation that takes a long time and plays a sound.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I can't seem to find what I get for my money, what concepts and commands are covered? How many "cases" are there?

Currently the first rank is 11 cases, and the second rank is 20 additional cases. The second rank covers WHERE with numbers, strings, dates and timestamps, IN, BETWEEN, AND and OR. Check out the guide tab in the game - it covers everything supported so far. Once you finish that, you go into practice mode where you're randomly asked the same kind of cases like the previous ones. I plan on adding support for GROUP BY, aggregate functions, HAVING, aliases, JOINING multiple tables, and some more stuff with more complex cases to match.

And the 6 months countdown doesn't begin until the game development ends so you're enjoying longer access.

This is a cool idea but if you accidentally hit the back button or refresh it loses all your progress with no obvious way to skip ahead. Frustrating.

It can be solved with saving stuff to local storage, but I tried to not use it to be more GDPR compliant...

Isn't local storage pretty good for compliance? It doesn't automatically send the data to your server like a cookie would, so as long as you don't send it, you haven't collected it.

I have a hard time imagining a GDPR complaint in which storing ones own data on their computer would constitute a privacy violation

As long as you do not transmit the data ever, using localStorage isn't a GDPR concern other than that you should mention it (and the in-browser-only use, with data never leaving the users' systems) on your privacy policy page for the sake of transparency and to avoid users asking about it.

I’d love to see fun stuff like this for all kinds of technical skills. Even pytorch for example.

Actually why couldn’t an entire online class be working towards solving some kind of mystery. You wouldn’t even notice you’re building skills.

This looks great! It was difficult to find out that you had to click the Play button for me "▷". Since this is a primary action you might want to consider adding a stronger Call to Action there?

Thanks for the feedback! I was wondering the same thing.

This seems like a neat idea. Not sure about paid, though, in its current incarnation. There's a ton of similar things unpaid. Why would I pay for this over Khan Academy's excellent SQL course, for example?

It seems like a piece of a business, not a business in itself. To be successful as a product or solution, there needs to be more around it -- some way to integrate it into contexts, have it used in schools, or in afterschool, or something.

Another key component would be user studies -- develop PCK about what supports and help students need.

  SELECT Email
  FROM mailing_list
  ORDER BY JoinDate

  SQL Error: There is no field named JoinDate in the resulting FROM table.

Ok? What engine is this using? That's valid SQL in my universe.

In PostgreSQL 12:

  mulmen@shell> psql
  psql (12.1)
  Type "help" for help.

  mulmen=# CREATE TABLE foo ( bar INT, baz INT );
  CREATE TABLE
  mulmen=# INSERT INTO foo VALUES (1, 10), (2, 20);
  INSERT 0 2
  mulmen=# SELECT bar FROM foo ORDER BY baz;
   bar
  -----
     1
     2
  (2 rows)

  mulmen=#

Syntax is fine, it's complaining because you didn't include `JoinDate` column in your query.

This appears to be a syntax error. I get a different error if I add JoinDate to the SELECT clause without adding the other columns it wants.

Thank you for the feedback. The SQL parsing is home made and I assumed fields in the order by clause is also a part of the SELECT. I collect a window of failed queries in memory (without knowing who sent what) to find cases like this and fix them.

It's great! I would buy a licence but I don't know how many cases do you have altogether?

Same. And on 50% discount.

I plan on adding support for GROUP BY, aggregate functions, HAVING, aliases, JOINING multiple tables, and some more stuff with more complex cases to match.

And the 6 months countdown doesn't begin until the game development ends so you're enjoying longer access.

I think it would be more compelling to see how much more material there is, or at least how much is planned, like a timeline or map. I'm a little hesitant to purchase it blind.

That would convince me to pay for this

Is this for total beginners or does it also cover advanced features like window functions as well? If not, is there a similar tool for learning advanced SQL features?

I personally enjoyed https://pgexercises.com/ a lot. As much as I'm not an SQL expert by any means, I learned things most of my peers would find "too complex" while doing those exercises.

The site is interactive, but you can also download the dataset and do the exercises on your own database, if you so desire.

I like the interface, but why throw an error when a user has their mobile device in horizontal orientation?

Some of the instructions are worded weirdly, almost like they were auto-generated or mostly copy-pasted.

Yes, the instructions as well as the levels and the data are auto generated. If something sounds off, please email me and I'll fix it.

Minor, and doesn't seem worth emailing about. I got to the 4th one and 'seized' is spelled 'siezed'.

Really nice work. I had a lot of fun in that. Others have already mentioned the Backspace = page back issue where you could easily lose progress, but I played all the way through :) No need to purchase however as I already know SQL quite well. But really well done.

Cool concept but the license seems kind of weird to me. 20 bucks for six months? Will anything change in that time? You might want to add a bit of info on what the license gets you.

Thanks! The game is still in development. It covers SELECT, DISTINCT, FROM (with one table), ORDER BY, LIMIT in the free part. After buying a license, WHERE, IN, BETWEEN, AND and OR are also covered. Check out the guide tab in the game - it covers everything supported so far. I plan on adding support for GROUP BY, aggregate functions, HAVING, aliases, JOINING multiple tables, and some more stuff with more complex cases to match.

The 6 months countdown doesn't begin until the game development ends so you're enjoying longer access.

Cool game, but I think pricing maybe a value issue. Might make more $$ if you just had a donation button, and some ads and maybe an option to upgrade to remove ads/donation nags. Plus you'd get a lot more word of mouth, and maybe add some social sharing of 'accomplishments' etc...

>"A mailing list of an illegal online service was sent to the SQLPD hot-line. Please submit all records email addresses' details. Please make sure there are no duplicates."

typo

I'm missing it. Where's the typo?

records is possessive and should have the apostrophe, addresses is not possessive and should not. This class of typo is pretty common throughout the briefs I have looked at.

Are the names and email addresses in the sample data real? They seem auto generated but the domains are real providers like Hotmail, Gmail, and Outlook.

I searched a few emails in some local copies of data breaches and found real results

Everything is randomised, nothing is based real data. It's auto generated from popular first names, last names, changing patterns and random years or numbers attached at the end. Domains are real, but randomised as well.

It's kinda risky in my opinion. I just checked a few of the addresses (mostly the one's without any numbers at the end), some of them do actually belong to real people.

What's the risk? Your email address isn't exactly a secret...

Well it's not exactly a risk, but people might get miffed their email is part of some website without their permission.

Also, in a rather grim coincidence, one of the emails I googled belonged to a person who had died in a car crash few years ago.

I was aiming for a feeling of dealing with real data (even though it's not). Changing the email domain names to fictitious ones will solve this, but I think would undermine the feeling of real-ness.

I was wondering the same thing. As combos of common names and providers, it seems extremely likely that many of those email addresses are valid addresses belonging to real people.

I can only solve the first one. I click submit, get a "Solved" stamp, and it prompts me with the same problem again.

The first two are cases of selecting the whole table. Since it's (completely) randomised, there is a chance of getting the same table twice. I didn't account for that :-P If you solve it again, you'll get a new case following that.

The question where it asks for the list of unique download counts makes no sense.

The cases are randomly generated; It asks for unique values of a random column in a random table. Sometimes it asks for unique password hashes... It's an edge case I didn't account for.

Interesting, why not hand pick the questions?

For replay-ability. Each time you need to understand the problem and construct a query instead of remembering that the answer was X (when I prototyped this in some of the cases you needed to pick the right answer from a cell in the table, not submit the whole thing).

I literally can't get past the first level and I have no idea why.

click on GUI.

click SELECT

click *

click FROM

click mailing_list

click run

I had one before that, asking about all member data from a darknet list. It seemed logical that select * from members would be the answer based, but I couldn't get it to accept no matter how many times I tried. Kept saying failed to fetch after run. I closed and reopened the browser, tried again, and it worked on the first attempt.

Click SELECT, then click each field, then FROM subscribers, then the play button. Seems almost too easy.

Good idea. It could be replicated for languages as well.

(in Space Quest narrator voice) Oh, no! Sequel Police!

I love it that was a fun past time ;)

Fun idea :)

If only this was real life.

Excellent. Great fun.

LOVED THIS! (newbie sql learner from datacamp)

Amazing

Very cool @doronlinder

Wow. I lolled.

Here are some other SQL Learning resources I have collected in my note taking TiddlyWiki (mostly from HN itself).

Interactive SQL Tutorials :

▪ Chartio Interactive PostgreSQL SQL Tutorial - https://chartio.com/learn/sql/

▪ Select STAR SQL - https://selectstarsql.com/

▪ SQL Bolt - Learn SQL with simple, interactive exercises - https://sqlbolt.com/

▪ SQL Window functions - https://www.windowfunctions.com/

▪ PostgreSQL Exercises - https://pgexercises.com/

▪ SQL Zoo - http://sqlzoo.net/

▪ SQL Teaching - https://www.sqlteaching.com/

▪ ByteScout SQL Trainer - Use live data to train - https://app.bytescout.com/sql-trainer/index.html

▪ Schemaverse - A space-based strategy game implemented entirely within a PostgreSQL database - https://schemaverse.com/

▪ Oracle Live SQL - Lerarn and share SQL - https://livesql.oracle.com/

▪ GalaXQL 3.0 - an intractive tutorial with exploring the galaxy - http://sol.gfxile.net/g3/

▪ SQL Exercises - http://sql-ex.ru/index.php

Great collection thanks! Has anyone used them or have any comment on the difficulty of the sources above?

I've used sqlbolt.com! It's great. Very easy to follow and it's interactive. They have a resource for regex: https://regexone.com/, which I've gone through as well!

Cool, must check out these

Reply on news.ycombinator.com