If you're given a dataset and are required to pull out specific parts of relevant data, what is the best way to go about it?

Will pay for decent answers

This is way too vague to give an answer. What's the exact problem you are trying to solve and what data/tables are you trying to manipulate?

I don't have a specific data set or task. It's just a general question.
Like writing scripts that can take apart a file n create little files based on the original

You don't need SQL to do that. Shell script / stream editor can do that.

If you have an actual database, then there is a standard query language with vendor-specific extensions that lets you do what you ask.

This post was edited by just_shotmikew2 on Aug 18 2014 02:44pm

Are we talking about SQL files?

What is the specific standard language?



Yes. The data is extracted from mutual and hedge funds and they have to be broken down to find specific info

SQL.

Could you give us sample data from one of these files or a generic example, and explain what needs to be extracted etc? It'll be much easier for us to understand whats going on.

how about you give a small sample in a google spreadsheet with different tabs as necessary, then provide a few sample outputs of stuff you'd like to filter along with explanations of how you got it

Small sample = 10 rows of data, 1-5 tabs. don't pour out millions of rows and hundreds of tabs for us.

Just import the SQL data into a db and use SELECT? LOL.

This post was edited by HighschoolTurd on Aug 19 2014 09:09am