End of the first EdX course
I finished watching all of Querying Data with Transact SQL. I was going to do all of the lab exercises, but they wanted $90 to allow me to access those.
Back when I first picked up the Training Kit from Itzik Ben-Gan, I felt it was completely overwhelming and that feeling stuck with me throughout the years when I would think about picking up the book.
I forgot that 6 years of professional experience passed. When I watched the course that does a kind of high level introduction of the same concepts, almost everything was what I do every day. I'd heard of 100% of the concepts and worked daily with 75% of the material every day. Only two or three functions I'd not used before, and I hadn't worked much with grouping sets, pivoting data (though I have done it in Excel), the APPLY operator and didn't do much with RAISERROR or THROW - but I used them in one project.
While I would still need to practice before the test, I hadn't realized how much I've gained just doing my job every day. I felt like I was only as good as the first few weeks on the job, and it's clear due to seeing the concepts in review, where I think "Oh, I wrote queries that required temporary tables for this project, or CTE expressions for that project" and that I'd been slowly gaining knowledge just by doing my job.
It makes me consider that I just might be able to study, take, and pass the first exam by the end of July. I'll take a look at the next EdX course that deals with the second exam. I don't think it'll be as easy - I watched the first course at 1.5x speed, but I might know more than I thought.
Back when I first picked up the Training Kit from Itzik Ben-Gan, I felt it was completely overwhelming and that feeling stuck with me throughout the years when I would think about picking up the book.
I forgot that 6 years of professional experience passed. When I watched the course that does a kind of high level introduction of the same concepts, almost everything was what I do every day. I'd heard of 100% of the concepts and worked daily with 75% of the material every day. Only two or three functions I'd not used before, and I hadn't worked much with grouping sets, pivoting data (though I have done it in Excel), the APPLY operator and didn't do much with RAISERROR or THROW - but I used them in one project.
While I would still need to practice before the test, I hadn't realized how much I've gained just doing my job every day. I felt like I was only as good as the first few weeks on the job, and it's clear due to seeing the concepts in review, where I think "Oh, I wrote queries that required temporary tables for this project, or CTE expressions for that project" and that I'd been slowly gaining knowledge just by doing my job.
It makes me consider that I just might be able to study, take, and pass the first exam by the end of July. I'll take a look at the next EdX course that deals with the second exam. I don't think it'll be as easy - I watched the first course at 1.5x speed, but I might know more than I thought.
Comments
Post a Comment