Learn SQL

For quite a while I was trying to learn SQL from books. I think I learned quite a lot, but until I actually started DOING it, I didn’t really get what was going on. Once you start using it you start understanding it a LOT better and your knowledge increases exponentially.

Sure, this is true for pretty much anything – but if you are trying to learn SQL (and while I’ve learned a lot I am definitely still just learning) don’t constrain yourselves to books. USE it.

With my career change to a student and assistant this fall, I will need to know SQL for the database work that the professors do. I bought a book and am trying to remember some of the language that I previously new (but forgot).

I feel I was a heckova premature scoring this off last year, given how much SQL I’ve learned in the meantime! But it’s fab – I’ve been on a course the last two days, and while most of it has been more refresher (I’m a bit too advanced for the beginner’s course, but not entirely ready for the advanced!), it’s been really great to reassure myself that I do know a good deal of this, and also suss a few of the ‘too-basic-to-mention’ things I didn’t know from my learn-as-I-go approach, and wouldn’t be mentioned anywhere other than a starter course.

_{Of course, it hasn’t taught me how to write shorter sentences}

Two really great pluses: there are two SQL chapters in my degree module – definitely covered off, now; and I can go back to work and appear both uber-useful AND enjoy more mucking about with code :)

_{oh yeah – and about a dozen yummy cookies over the past few days. Ahem}

OK, I have worked my way through that book and I am getting the hang of this. It all seems rather simple really. I now know how to write SQL queries, including queries involving joins. I’m not sure how much more I actually need to know, given that I need SQL to interact with databases, not to create databases. I think I will learn a bit more before I mark this done.

Ok, so my boss tells me that I have to learn SQL because he need someone to do complex reports and that just isn’t really doable with Business Objects and our universes. So…I’m the lucky one. I am not that keen on doing this one but I don’t really have a way to get out of it so I’ll just have to bite the bullet.

I just wanted a consistent way to store my data and to understand the db backend of most web apps. PHP usually connects to a MySQL database. However, SQL is useful everywhere. Even in small scripts, utilizing SqLite.

Currently I have finished the first 2 chapters of the O’Reilly book ‘Learning SQL’

I don’t do well on “learn X” goals because they’re a bit vague, at least where X is quite a big subject like SQL, so I need smaller targets that I can tick off my list.

So, the first part of this goal is to buy more memory for my computer so that I can run the latest version of Ubuntu (yep, my computer is almost obsolete…). Then, I need to download and install the stuff I need to play with SQL.

After that, the next challenge is to grok the book “Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes” by Ben Forta. Amazon told me that this book is good for beginners.

This query languange is used in so many applications.

Learning more stuff now, can write some basic queries and what not. Many opportunities at work to use what I learn, so that helps a lot.

I want to learn SQL to set up a database for my web page to manage my blog in instead of using cutenews or wordpress. I want to ALL coding of my web page on my own and ditch cutenews.