Trying to get smartified!

In my very lazy pursuit of knowledge, I have bought a book about SQL aka Sequel. I'm learning this mainly for my job just because it will be tons easier if I can run my own queries and stuff without having to ask someone to do it for me. Not to mention, if I want to get a new job, knowing how to do SQL will be a definate plus since most large IT organizations like it if you know how to do SQL. ;)

I'm sure some of you are asking, wtf is all this geek speak anyway??? Well I am a techie somewhat and we use this huge relational database (too complicated to explain, if you want to know what it is buy the book!!) at work and the easiest way to get info out of it is to run a query (thats a search for you non technical people) against the database using archaic statements that seem cryptic (stuff like SELECT, WHERE, ORDER BY, etc.... in really long strings) than using the application that connects to the database. This way I can see everything and narrow down the data to the actual stuff that I need. Pretty nifty eh?

The book I bought is called Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes. That doesn't mean to say that I'm going to be an SQL guru in 10 minutes, it has lessons in it and each one is 10 minutes. I haven't counted all the lessons yet but I do know that I'm only on lesson 4 and I'm learning how to get info out of a table. I downloaded a simple Access database to do the lessons but when I get more experience and confidence, I'm going to try it on the test version of our CMDB and see if I can get some useful info out of the thing. :)