As a DBA, I’ve found Stack Exchange Data Explorer to be a really useful tool for exploring and analyzing the data from the Stack Exchange network of websites. It’s kind of like having a SQL playground where you can run all sorts of queries and see what insights you can uncover from the data.

One of the things I like about Stack Exchange Data Explorer is that it’s web-based, so you don’t have to download and process the data yourself. You just fire up the tool, write your query, and see the results. It’s super easy to use and it’s a lot of fun to see what insights you can uncover from the data.

I’ve also found that Stack Exchange Data Explorer has a lot of pre-built queries and visualizations that you can use as a starting point for your own analysis. These queries and visualizations cover a wide range of topics, such as user activity, Q&A statistics, and tag popularity. It’s really interesting to see what other people have discovered from the data and it can give you some ideas for your own analysis.

Another cool thing about Stack Exchange Data Explorer is that you can share your queries and visualizations with others. This makes it easy to collaborate and share your insights with the broader Stack Exchange community. It’s a great way to learn from other people’s work and to share your own findings with others.

This is how it looks:

The interesting content is down at number 24 (Database Administrator site) in the list 😉

You can view other folk’s queries on each database, as well as create a query of your own as mentioned above. This can happen even by accident. If you run a query it creates a fork, which I didn’t know.

The top query above is my one.

My last example shows the SQL of a report I find interesting:

-- stack exchange data explorer, show top posts since last year
SELECT TOP 10 Title, ViewCount, Score, Tags, CommentCount
FROM Posts
WHERE CreationDate > DATEADD(year, -1, GETDATE())
ORDER BY ViewCount DESC

The interface is smooth and responsive. A perfect place to see what’s hot and perhaps to gain some xp in querying.

If you’re a DBA or just someone who likes to play with data, I highly recommend checking this site out.