SQL makes me SQueaL

During the DITA session it all seemed to make sense.  The theory behind SQL, how to interrogate a database, tables, structure, etc – all makes sense and seemed logical. I use databases a lot, like it when they work and understood the theory behind the interface. Surely I could use my logical approach and understand this?

No. No, no and no. In the labs I just could not understand it. My paper understanding of it melted away and generating a list of the ‘PubID, Name, Company Name and City for all publishers based in the city of New York’ became a madman’s dream.

I looked up resources on line and went over the notes and lecture but nothing seemed to work. I could see nice, neat tables marching around other screens while I could barely manage to get the thing to respond to any request with a hint of politeness. It felt like I was back in school and it was long division all over again, when everyone else got it and I was marooned on an uncomprehending island of ignorance as they sailed away on a tortured metaphor.

After a quick session with one of the tutors and a kind fellow student it was clear that I did not grasp the grammar and syntax on an almost fundamental level. The construction of the commands made no sense to me and that became a barrier to the next step, of knowing what the commands were and how to ask for what I wanted. Added to that, I could not ‘see’ the data or the commands which meant I couldn’t work backwards or forwards on interpreting successful commands and how they interface with SQL.

I managed to get a few of the tasks done but even that became guesswork based on mutilation of successful commands as opposed to creating a command that would work from scratch. Deeply frustrating and the successful and elegant tables I could see on other machines by my fellow classmates made it worse as I couldn’t really see why I didn’t get SQL.

I will have another bash at this but I have to admit that my enthusiasm for another session is low. The chances of ever having to interrogate an SQL database like this are very low and it was so difficult I don’t want to waste any more time. I would like to understand it and master it at a basic level but will have to convince myself it's worth it first.

On a brighter note my new suit was fantastic.

HTM Hell

There has been a small hiatus, my loyal readership, as I had a very busy week and could not quite crack the HTML task in DITA. I managed to get all the pages up and viewable after following some advice from a tutor and I also crowd sourced some answers from others on the message boards.  

But I still could still not get the images to show up. Once again the answers were on the message boards and I had to copy the picture files over to the W drive to make them appear. A clash between relative and absolute links had seemed to be the issue and low and behold it was.

A quick copy across and there I was. It looks like a personal website from when I was first on the information superhighway back in the early nineties. Sparse, plenty of bone white screen, not very well adjusted and pretty dull. But it is still up there and the links between all sites work with the pictures and that can only be called a victory.

As well as managing to get that page up, this has shown me the value of the course message boards. There’s currently talk of arranging a visit to Kings and some sort of social gathering which is all good and the assistance available via tutors and other students  has already proved its worth beyond doubt. Hopefully I’ll be able to help out some others as the course goes on.

Unfortunately I have to go to my tailors to pick up a new suit tonight so will miss any first post lecture drinks, but hope to make any future meet ups. Just who are most of these people I am surrounded by on a Monday...?

Now we have moved to databases and SQL. Familiar terms from my time at Nokia but I never cracked those books open. I think I understand the basics of it and have an intellectual understanding of database construction and interrogation but the proof is in the eating of the pudding.

Just looking at the end tasks, this is going to take some more skull power to solve, so in I go to SQL Land, population millions of bits of data.