There's Too Much to Learn

About this episode

Steve Jones reflects on his journey of learning SQL Server and the increasing complexity of related literature over the years.

I remember getting started on SQL Server and trying to upskill myself in the mid-1990s. At that time, my employer was running a SQL Server 4.2 instance for a third-party application, but we wanted to rewrite our internal bespoke sales app to run on SQL Server. We were upgrading from Foxpro to Visual Foxpro and looking to move from shared dbf files to a SQL Server. There was a new release of SQL Server 6.5 during our development, and I wanted to learn more about it. I purchased Inside SQL Server 6.5 and read the entire thing, getting prepared to finish development and then manage a new platform in production. I had updated copies of that book as SQL Server released new versions until SQL Server 2005. When that came out, there weren't one, but rather 4 books to cover the Inside SQL Server details ( Programming , Query Tuning , T-SQL , and The Storage Engine ). A similar thing happened with the SQL Server Bible , which grew in size to over 1400 pages for the 2012 version. It was a backache in a book if you put it in with your laptop. Read the rest of There's Too Much to Learn

People in this episode

Host: Steve Jones

Topics covered

• SQL Server
• upskilling
• database management
• technology evolution
• programming

Keywords

• SQL Server
• upskill
• database
• programming
• technology

Mentioned in this episode

Products: SQL Server 4.2, Visual Foxpro, SQL Server 6.5, SQL Server 2005

Books & works: Inside SQL Server 6.5, SQL Server Bible

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