Who Trains You?
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Does your employer provide the training currently needed by the business, or do they go beyond that to keep your skills at the leading edge. Most IT people, at best, get the training needed to support the business and have limited personal resources to go beyond that. However, if you want to improve your income, then doing some training outside work is vital and it is important to maximise the benefit of any personal money spent on training. This article focuses on what has worked for me, but we can all gain if other people share their tips.
The best value resources are free. Sites such as this one and Search... at TechTarget are amongst my favourites. Periodicals such as SQL Server Magazine have a small cost, but it is normally possible to get your employer to pay for any subscription needed. If you see an interesting article, send the link to your personal address, and maintain a folder of free training for later use.
My tip for best value spend is a TechNet Plus Direct subscription. This costs GBP 234 (USD $349), and gives you access to the latest Microsoft server software, allowing you to install multiple copies if you are the only user. I run 32-bit and 64-bit W2003, Longhorn, SQL Server 2005, Vista and Office 2007 at home, all from TechNet.
Another good value tip is buying used but current books on sites such as Amazon or eBay. Savings are typically 25%, but can be greater. You often need the advice given in books to develop best-practice skills, and used books get you that advice at the cheapest rate. You can always sell them on when you are done with them.
Software and books have a limited value without a machine to practice the skills on. At the low-end, a standard 64-bit 2GB machine is the best value for money. At the high-end, a custom build is often the best way to go. In January I commissioned a twin-xeon desktop box using a X7DAL-E motherboard, 4 GB memory, 0.5 TB disk and 1650XT video for under GBP 1500 (under USD $3000). Anyone interested can discuss the research for a custom build in the forum thread for this editorial.
For me, this combination of kit is
allowing me to get and maintain leading-edge skills. I have a crash & burn
environment at home where I can go further than what is possible in the office
with Virtual Server, SQL Server 2005, clustering, replication, etc, which last
year helped me gain an above-average bonus. Being an IT professional means
being professional about your training. Take charge of this, and you have
nothing to loose but your chains.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
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You do IT moves too fast to wait for an employer even Software Engineering companies may not use the latest to keep your skills up to date. Another thing to do get cross platform it cost very little to be Java certified so if you are in a big city Microsoft will pickup some of your education cost if you get noticed and help their users a lot. I was born lucky my Mother angry with her education situation just asked book titles not the cost so books is what I buy before anything. It became very useful in the .NET early adopters training period the men covered what was new in C# compared to C++ or Java.
In SQL Server the product is your best training the reason we asked for and got the no deployment Developer edition to under $40 online, install the product and do everything Microsoft and the experts say you cannot do but focus on solutions to business needs. The eval version is good for six months and run searches in the BOL but also get books by Ken Henderson, Ken England and a few others in 2005 you need at least four to five books to cover all subsystems, OLTP, Dimension Modeling, Prediction Modeling, ETL, T-SQL programming and Performance Tuning books. You also need books by Relational experts like Joe Celko, Chris Dates,G.Lawrence Sanders and Ralph Kimbal on the OLAP end of the relational model. The link below gives you the lowest cost book prices. One more thing Express edition is for deployment of employers or customer solution don't use it for training because there is no Agent and Profiler the automation and performance tuning subsystems.
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie -
Regarding books, if you're interested in a little work to get the book for free, the book review SIG over at SQL PASS will have a host of new books in the next month or two. You get the book to keep and all you have to do is write a review. It's worth the deal. You can even suggest a book and they'll contact the publisher to get it. After you finish one review, request another book and keep going. You get educational materials and you get a bit of public recognition at the same time.
Disclosure: I'm on the book review committee. We're transitioning between service providers so the current list is short, but we'll have a new, long, list up inside of four weeks.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore RooseveltAuthor of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning -
For my career life, I learn everything on my own. No company even sent me to training.
You can't believe how much money I spent on Amazon.com. They actually sent me a Christmas gift one time !!!!!!
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Work has sent me for training on some of our programs. However, my programming skills were either learned through schooling or on my own. I've found my ACM Professional Membership has well been worth it - giving me access to a vast digital library as well as free classes through NetG (soon to be through the company who bought NetG out). I've sat through SQL and Crystal classes, and I've gotten about halfway through their MCDBA curriculum. I'm going to have to start over with that, though, as I won't finish my coursework in time for their cutover (mid-April), but the fact that I can take these courses for free makes it easier for me to keep up with technology.
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My old company would tell you that they would wait to see what projects you would work on and then get you the training for that job. Then the job would come up and there would not be time to get training so you would just throw stuff together. Now, in the end it made me better since I relied on teaching myself what I needed to know to get the job done but I never feel like I had truly elegant code or a great process. Some of these things come in time and experience but sometimes it can be helped with training. Anyhow, they are now my old company. Unfortunately that is the way they operate and the internal software they release will not be as good as it can be if they provided the training and resources to get the job done. Heck they still don’t allow internet access for developers (okay stop laughing now). It is very short sighted and it will eventually come back to bite them.
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"Don't allow internet access for developers"
I will be dead. I depend on the internet to find the answers to a lot of my problems. Internet is one of my training tool !
When I have problem in SQL, without internet, how am I going to post my problem on SQLServercentral.com?
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This might be a little off topic, but I thought everyone here might have a good answer to this. You mention Technet Direct as a good purchase so what is the difference between Technet being relatively cheap and the MSDN subscription which is a lot more expensive?
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If it's something new and I just need an overview of it.. I go to Barnes & Noble or Borders over here in the mall, get a cup of coffee (read, spend some money) and then I sit and read whatever it is I need to know. I have extremely good comprehension and always feel ripped off when I buy a book, read it, and never have to look at it again. I like web articles a lot, but I can't read them on-screen, so I still like books a lot. Books that are good as references, I will buy. I tend to keep them too long though. Just a few weeks back, I turned a Java 1.1 Certification Manual into firewood. Might find another one and burn it today... so snowy here
Having a couple of throwaway computers is very handy... you can do anything with it, even totally kill it, and you don't feel like you lost money, only time. I don't push the limits on my personal laptop, but I've killed my home server a couple times (although once it was spyware and not really my fault). I've got a disposable Mac with OSX in case I ever need that too. It's too slow to use, but it's a good test box to see if things will work without crashing.
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There are various levels of both Technet and MSDN, with different prices. Technet Plus gives you all MS operating systems and Office software. MSDN gives you the application development tools, plus the OS stuff if you pay enough.
For what I want to do, TechNet Plus Direct gives me the mix of software I want. For the .Net tools, I can download the Express version of VB, etc for free. The 'Direct' suffix on Technet means you have to download everything, or you can get things on DVD for a higher fee.
The best thing is to look at the MS sites describing the contents of the various MSDN and Technet offerings.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
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