Search⌘ K
AI Features
Home
Courses
Learn SQL in the Age of AI

Planning Join Paths

Explore how to plan and visualize join paths across multiple tables before writing SQL queries. Understand how to connect tables like employees, departments, and managers using different join strategies. Practice planning join paths, translating them into SQL, and validating results to build a strong foundation in relational thinking and multi-table queries.

We'll cover the following...

Step 1: Start with a problem, not code

So far, you’ve executed joins. Now let’s learn to plan them.

Imagine your database has three tables:

  • employees contains employee_id, name, department_id.

  • departments contains department_id, department_name, manager_id.

  • managers contains manager_id, manager_name.

And your question is: What is each employee’s name, their department name, and their manager’s name?

Before writing SQL, pause.

Can you visualize the path of relationships? Try to map it mentally or sketch it: employees → departments → managers ...