As a follow up to my Microsoft eLearning SQL 2008 Administration course review, I decided to explore what Lynda.com had to offer in the SQL Server arena. The only offering was the “SQL Server 2008 Essentials Training course“.  I’d like to describe that experience and contrast it to the Microsoft offering.

Lynda.com Subscription

The folks at Level 7 subscribed to the full Lynda.com catalog in mid 2010. You can preview any of the courses at no charge. You can then subscribe  for one of four plans: Monthly, Monthly Premium, Annual or Annual Premium. An Annual Premium subscription allows you to view each course as many times as you want, download all of the exercise files, run through them with the instructor where applicable, and buy a DVD of the collection generally, for an additional $99.00 per course. With unlimited viewing privileges, we believe that the Annual Premium subscription is the way to go.

SQL  Server 2008 Essential Training

This course is new, released in December, 2010. It’s around seven hours in duration and contains presentation, demonstrations and walk through examples that correspond to the exercise files included in the course. Click here to launch the Welcome Movie. The instructor is Simon Allardice, author, trainer and web developer.

The course is takes you through the basics: software installation (where to find SQL Server 2008 Express and the sample databases from Codeplex), building a sample database, importing data, backup and CRUD. CRUD, the acronym for Create, Read, Update, Delete, is amply demonstrated with appropriate statement examples. Security, creating Server Logon and Database Logon and permissions are covered quite well.

After that foundation, a pleasant surprise, as Simon introduces SQL Reporting Services, including creating charts and graphs.

The Take Away

The Microsoft eLearning SQL Server 2008 Administration course is geared toward the IT Professional as it contains many of the features that and administrator would deal with, like Backup/Recovery, Replication, High Availability, to name a few. However, most admins are not familiar with the end-user aspect of manipulating data. Perhaps that’s why Microsoft introduced some built in functionality into Management Studio to allow the casual admin the ability to select and edit a limited amount of data easily. Of course, Management Studio shows the T-SQL behind each query and each query has access to query builder/designer, so after a while, manipulating data becomes a little easier  over time. 

If you are very new to database and have an interest in getting to know what database management and in particular Microsoft SQL Server, then this course is your answer. You can then choose to be an application developer, Database Administrator or Architect or all three, for the high achievers in the group. On the other hand, the Microsoft course is well suited for the professional, who is knowledgeable with servers, and network infrastructure to pickup a good understanding of SQL Server and use the experience to deep dive into various aspects of the product.

As always, have fun.