How fast (days) can one learn Access SQL?

[skoolz]

I'm transitioning from Excel and VBA to Access & SQL and would like to know how fast (days) can one learn Access SQL?

Thanks

 

[Minty]

I've been using Access on and off for 15 + years, and I'm still learning. How long is a piece of string.

If you understand how a database works and that it isn't a spreadsheet you should pick up the basics in about 2-3 weeks depending on your aptitude.

To get to a medium level of competence would probably take at least 6 months if you don't do anything else.

 

[jdraw]

Define "learn".
Analogy to your question:
- How long is a string?
- How high is up?

Do you have any SQL experience?
Do you have any database experience?

Do some tutorials. Build some sample databases and queries.

Great tutorial on designing a database is this from RogersAccessLibrary - but you have to work through it.

Some links:
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/

Google "leaning sql youtube" for tutorials.

For relational database youtube playlist
see https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF97870F94CDE8F21

 

[AnthonyGerrard]

17 days.

Or in the case of a "dba" I once worked with , with IT degree and supposedly having MS sql server quals - still couldn't do a simple SELECT after 10 years.


When I say simple, I mean with a join and some criteria. Really , genuinely that bad.

Hes now a senior development manager. So I am not sure if he thought he'd mastered it after 1 day - or where he's up to now in his mastery.

Best b*ll**tting a career I have ever seen. Nice fella though.

So many variables to be able to answer this question.

 

[spikepl]

42 :d

 

[skoolz]

Thanks everyone... your responses fill me with a bit more confidence... I have a couple of official tutorials that I am following so the concept is grasped I now kinda know my way around access, just working on the Sql language.....

watch this space..

 

[Rx_]

"What? There is SQL in MS Access? That will sure make things easier!"

Back when SQL was the domain of mainframes during my graduate school, the campus changed from IBM to DEC mainframes midway during a trimester.
SQL was just painful on a mainframe.
Steve Ballmer came to the campus and addredd a room of about 75 of us. So, I got the free copy of MS Access. No tutorial back then, just text books written by mostly math majors. Within three weeks, I had my assignments completed for the trimester.
Then, I actually got a contract converting ebcdic to ascii downloaded from government computer tapes. That paid form my i386x processor with extended memory. I used the data with SQL code in Access to create massive custom weekly price guides to send to 300 Page per minute printers.
I was a starving graduate student laied off from electronics development in the former Cold War with a new baby renting a basement apartment.

We didn't have all of this nice internet and fancy tutorials with computers that had hard drives to hold a new application without uninstalling another, or monitors over 13" inches muchless color... "And we liked it". (pun from the Saturday Night 'old guy') You have a lot of great resources available to you and several versions of better software available. Just study, try and read, repeat... There is so much free stuff for you to use and find help with.

I remember our campus had a pre-internet tool for connecting to the mainfraims and the internet. Our campus was one of the orginal 8 national nodes set up. The tool was called OMGATE. It literally stood for Oh My God, Another Terminal Emulator.
I will personally never miss the old VI Editor.

If you put the same dedication into SQL as a high-school student puts into an on-line game for three weeks, you will be able to do most things and ask intelligent questions about the rest as you encounter them.

 

[Vassago]

I guess it depends on what you mean by learn and willingness and time you are willing to put into it. I consider myself very proficient in SQL, but I still learn new tricks all the time.