August 12, 2019 at 6:30 pm
Hey all,
Junior DBA here in USA. There are several community colleges near me that offer Database management degree programs. I'm wanting to get into DB development, and i'm not sure how to make the leap since im coming from IT background. Does anyone have any experience with such programs? or recommendations in general?
Thanks!
August 13, 2019 at 3:15 am
A Microsoft certification may be worth more if that's what you want to cut your teeth on. Combine that with an internship to get some "experience" documented on your resume and you'll make the leap for a whole lot less money in a whole lot less time.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 13, 2019 at 9:57 am
I agree with Jeff on this. I have seen too many people at interviews that have amazing paper qualifications and yet can't answer my most basic practical questions.
Microsoft are very good at specifying what skills you need to learn for the various aspects of SQL Server. Pick an area for certification and see what you need to learn for that.
There are many amazing resources online and you just need to ask here for any additional material.
You already have both feet firmly planted in the DBA area, so just show what you know as you progress and it will help considerably. I have a blog site not just because I like to share whatever I've learned (and my memory isn't what it used to be) but also because it is a great help at interviews. They can have an idea of my skill set and methodology by looking at that, so we don't waste each other's time.
August 13, 2019 at 11:39 am
Film school drop out with a 30+ year career in IT.
Gather experience and knowledge, not pieces of paper. Very early in your career, the paper can help getting the first jobs. If you're already working, keep working. You would only need that piece of paper to get your foot in the door.
I'm also not a fan of the certifications. Because they can be gamed, I think their worth as a measuring stick is near absolute zero. However, as has been pointed out, they do provide a learning pathway that is pretty good (it's not great). So following the learning for the certification does have some value. The certification itself, less in my estimation, but not zero (consulting firms frequently get everyone to certify in order to become Microsoft Partners, that I agree with).
To help with your learning, find questions here on SQL Server Central and answer them. It's a great way to learn.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
August 13, 2019 at 2:03 pm
Totally agree with Grant. I don't care for the certification alphabet soup a lot of people have after their names because too many of them have gamed the system to get the knocks.
It doesn't matter, though, if you pursue a degree or a certification if you do it right. "Right" means getting a laptop or home computer that can handle what you need to do in SQL Server, get a copy of the "Developers Edition" of SQL Server, and hit the books... whether you're pursuing a degree or not. I've been very successful in doing so and I don't have any certifications and I have no degrees. And, yeah, that's still possible.
Either way, if you don't do the (study) time, you'll stand in line.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 13, 2019 at 2:08 pm
Thank You all for the information!
August 13, 2019 at 2:15 pm
p.s. The essential key for me was learning how to make a shedload of test data in virtually any form I needed it. When it come to performance, you need a LOT of test data. With only rare exceptions, the minimum size of my main test table for whatever I'm working on is a million rows (which is tiny compared to today's databases) and frequently much larger. Here's a couple of links to get you started in that area...
If you want to see an extreme for generating test data, try generating a million node hierarchy. See the "HierarchyCode.zip" file at the bottom of the following article. Without being able to generate such a hierarchy auto-magically, on demand, and in a snappy manner, there's no way that I could have developed the new method for converting a million node "Adjacency List" to "Nested Sets" in 54 seconds instead of it taking something like 2 days nor could I have developed the pre-aggregated hierarchy in part 2 of that 2 part series of articles.
The really cool part about knowing how to generate large amounts of custom test data rapidly is you learn a whole lot about data and a whole lot about how to handle it... and handling data (lots of it) is one of the primary goals of any training for RDBMS systems.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
August 13, 2019 at 3:20 pm
In this modern age, don't forget that you don't have to download and install SQL Server. You can pretty quickly spin up containers with SQL Server ready to play with. It's all about what you're trying to learn. Development versions of SQL Server (containers or not) are free. SQL Server Management Studio and Azure Data Studio are free. You can absolutely get started with only a small computer.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
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