Resources to Learn Programming #2

Database Administration Fundamentals (WS17SQL1007) – Day 2

Review what we have covered so far and last night’s lab. As I mentioned, if you are interested in taking the Database Fundamentals certification exam (MTA 98-364), there is a lot of theory that you would need to know. Refer to the class notes or the Exam 98-364 MTA Database Administration Fundamentals book (ISBN 9780470889169) book in the syllabus for the theory.

As usual, if you have any question, do not hesitate to contact me.

Download the class notes for day 2.

Database Administration Fundamentals (WS17SQL1007) – Day 1

We have started a new SQL course.

As I explained last night, each relational database management systems (RDBMS) vendor has some proprietary syntax and tools. Therefore some code has to be converted when moving code from SQL Server to Oracle, PostgreSQL or SQLite. Some third-parties have released facilities like SQLines. If you have any questions on other systems, do not hesitate to contact me.

By the way, you can use Valentina Studio Free to access databases similar to the SQL Server Management Studio client that we use in the classroom.

If you have Mac can use VirtualBox and download the Windows 10 with IE 11 VDI. Note you will need to install the .NET framework version 3.51 before the installation of SQL Server Express Edition and the SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) client.

Download the class notes for day 1. Note that the file includes a lot of theory that you need to know if you are planning to take the certification exam.

If you have any questions regarding any material covered in class or any RDBMS issues you might face at work, do not hesitate to contact me.

Average Increase of 19.85% in Computer Jobs by 2024

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that by 2024 there will be a 18.8% increase in the field of “Software developers, applications” with a median annual income of $100,080 and 20.9% in “Computer systems analysts” with a median annual income of $87,220 as of 04/14/2017 (https://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_104.htm). This means an average increase of 19.85% in fields like data analysis (SQL), programming and server management in both open source and proprietary environments. It also means that learning programming or system analysis (networking, server management, etc.) can secure yourself a good livelihood. Make the best out of the next seven years.

Poor Man’s T-SQL Formatter

When writing SQL or other programming languages, we all know how messy our code can get — mixing lower and upper case, placing commas in all the wrong place and many other issues all over the code.

It is good practice to have code that others can easily read. In other words, we want a clean code using a constant format — not like the code below.

/* written on 05/16/2017, by JDOE */
select distinct table01.field01, table01.field02
, table02.field03,table02.field04
from table01 inner join
table02
	on table01.field01 = table02.field01
	; -- messy code

This is where open-source plug-in Poor Man’s T-SQL Formatter (http://poorsql.com/) by Architect Shack (code available at GitHub) or other utilities come in handy when writing T-SQL. After running the utility, the code above is organized as shown below.

/* written on 05/16/2017, by JDOE */
SELECT DISTINCT table01.field01,
	table01.field02,
	table02.field03,
	table02.field04
FROM table01
INNER JOIN table02
	ON table01.field01 = table02.field01; -- clean code

I will start using Poor Man’s T-SQL Formatter (http://poorsql.com/) when teaching future T-SQL courses.