MySQL Real-World Projects: Building a Reporting Dashboard

Create a Sales Summary Dashboard Query

Write a SQL query that summarizes total sales by region and month using sample sales and customers tables.

Expected output: A query result showing total sales per region for each month.

Hint: Use JOIN to combine sales and customers, GROUP BY region and month, and aggregate sales amounts.

Optimize a Dashboard Query

Given a slow dashboard query, analyze it with EXPLAIN and suggest indexing or query changes to improve performance.

Expected output: A list of recommended indexes or query rewrites to speed up the query.

Hint: Look for full table scans and missing indexes in the EXPLAIN output.

Key considerations include data model design for efficient aggregation, query optimization for performance, indexing strategies, and integration with visualization tools.

Improving performance can be done by adding indexes on filter and join columns, using summary tables, limiting data returned, and analyzing queries with EXPLAIN.

Denormalization reduces the number of joins needed, which can speed up query performance for dashboards that require fast aggregation.