A hands-on sandbox built for financial professionals and anyone new to data. Pull real sample databases into Excel or Power BI, or practice simple queries in the browser — and every step shows you the plain SQL behind it. No installs, nothing to break.
Start where you’re comfortable — both paths hit the same real databases.
Connect Excel or Power BI to real data and build the reports you already know — while picking up data skills along the way. No coding required.
Practice real queries against realistic business data — no setup, no seed scripts. See the SQL behind every result so it actually sticks.
Real data means real practice. Here are starter projects a finance pro can build in an afternoon — plus a live chart drawn from this very API.
Pull orders and order-details, then chart revenue by month, product line and region. A classic
first BI project on the classicmodels or northwind data.
Load invoices and payments into Excel, add a pivot table and a few formulas, and produce an aging bucket report — the bread-and-butter of month-end.
Rank customers by spend, find your top products, and slice by country — all with pivot tables, no formulas required.
Pull rows from any table, choose columns, sort and page through the results.
Counts, sums and averages with grouping — the numbers behind every report.
Three ways to get live data into the tools you already use every day.
Browse tables, keys and how everything connects, database by database.
Every response shows the exact query — learn SQL just by clicking around.
Strictly read-only and free to start. Nothing you do can break anything.
Northwind, AdventureWorks, Classic Models and more — the business datasets you’ll meet in courses, tutorials and real reports.
The Playground and Web API are free for everyone. Direct database access for Excel, Power BI and any SQL client comes included — at no extra cost — with any CPE Today database or Excel course, alongside guided lessons that teach you how to use it.
No account, no install. Open the playground and go.