Beginning T-SQL and Career Roadmap for Women (and Men)! #SQLSatBR

This weekend at SQL Saturday Baton Rouge, we had an absolutely lovely time!

The short version:

The slightly longer version is totally about those two sessions I presented.

Beginning T-SQL

I really enjoy this session, and love being able to present it. I take a “brand new to SQL” approach, encourage questions, and start with a practical application that the class does together: we choose a subject and build a table for it!

The class often chooses something like “beer” to build our table around (hey, beers have names and rankings and alcoholic percentages and stuff to track!). But this time, I kind of pushed for something else, and we landed on “pets”. Fun stuff.

If you’d like to jump into querying for Microsoft’s SQL Server product, you could do MUCH worse than to watch a recording of this session and play along at home with the materials.

Career Roadmap for Women (and Men)!

My partner in not-crime* and I have now been in the business an AWFULLY long time, and we have developed rather strong opinions on quite a lot of career-related strategies.

“Career Roadmap” is a distillation of all the things I’ve seen and learned over an IT career spanning 22 years.

Now, why “Women (and Men)”? It’s not to alienate you, guys. (And most CERTAINLY not to alienate the lovely nonbinary folken!) I just want to stress that women are most especially welcome in this session, in a field that isn’t all that welcoming to women.

Download the session materials and check out the recording of the live Periscope broadcast.

And as always you can ping me on this blog, or on Twitter @MidnightDBA!

 

That’d be Sean (@KenpoDBA), for those of you new to the blog.

Big fall conference – PASS Summit schedule is up!

The big fall conference in the SQL Server world is PASS Summit, up in Seattle, WA. They just announced the full schedule is up, so you can gaze upon the sessions you might  want to see….for example, my lightning talk. 🙂 We’re also sponsoring again this year, so you’ll see MinionWare in the expo hall!

The big innovation this year, and one I like very much, is the Learning Pathways – a very clear roadmap for folks who are interested in a particular topic (like Data Security), but not sure which sessions to go to.

PASS Summit example of a learning pathway

PASS has also helpfully included a DOCX download of a letter convincing your boss to let you go to Summit so there’s nothing, er, little standing in your way! I hope.

Even if you don’t get to go, you should check out the Summit website for upcoming web events and content that will be available publicly during the event!

Cheers,

Jen

SSMS Keyboard Shortcut Fun

Andrea Allred (@RoyalSQL) just gave her SQL tips and tricks session at SQL Saturday Salt Lake City, and a great time was had by all! I learned some things I didn’t know – see her upcoming September 19 presentation of this session.

And, I got to give a few tips myself. She was particularly happy with the custom “change connection” shortcut. Here’s that blog:

Management Studio Shortcut – Change Connection

 

 

And a few bonus tips:

  • Dock Object Explorer on the right side so you don’t overlap so much code (thanks for the tip, @AndyMallon)
  • CTRL-W to select a word
  • CTRL-E to run your code
  • CTRL-U to change DBs
  • CTRL-G line numbers
  • IF 1=2 — this is a safety measure
    update table set ID = 1; — this is a dangerous unfinished query
  • Alt-space-N to minimize the whole window (Windows)
  • Ctrl-s for save
  • Shift-F10 for right click