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Helping Students with a Data Professional Career

At a recent event, I had a student ask about how to get started as a data professional. What types of things should they do? What platform should they work on or learn? Where should they focus time? What tools are available?

Those are all good questions and many of you likely have your own advice. I'll give a few things to think about today, which are good for anyone that might want to get into the data field. I think this is still one of the better technical careers. I've suggested this to my kids, though only one of them went into a technical area. One is a therapist for autistic children and one helps run the ranch while pursuing a graduate degree in literature.

If I were to give someone advice on how to get started in a tech field, I'd likely start with these items: first, download the free SQL Server developer or Express editions. Most of us run Windows and this is a good place to start. Get SSMS, and learn to connect to your server. If you have struggles, ask a question in our forums.

From there, I'd suggest working through a book on SQL. Or look at our Stairway series on T-SQL (basic, beyond basics, advanced). Learn to work with data and query it. Learn to download and get datasets into a database, as well as how to query, update, and analyze the data. Those are key skills. If you want to manage systems, try setting up an Availability Group, ensure you have backups and can restore systems, and maybe explore replication and CDC.

If you want to develop applications, then start building something. Ask a GenAI for help, but produce a working system that lets you analyze some data. Pick sports data, or music data, or something else, and produce an application or report that conducts an analysis of the data. Work with something that's interesting to you.

While you're doing this, blog. Write about what you learn. Build a growing resume that showcases your skills. Chat with others online, build a network of people, and always have an up-to-date resume that you can send out to find a job. Your resume/CV and your blog are invaluable.

That's my advice. Anything else you suggest?

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Join the debate, and respond to today's editorial on the forums
 
  Featured Contents
SQLServerCentral Article

Parameterize Connections in Microsoft Fabric Data Factory using Variable Libraries

Koen Verbeeck from SQLServerCentral

Building pipelines in Microsoft Fabric can be complicated, and it's easy to write code that is hard to maintain. Using parameters in your connections helps to build pipelines that are easily configured.
External Article

DMV Comparison for SQL Server 2019 vs Azure SQL Database

Additional Articles from MSSQLTips.com

What DMVs were added to Azure SQL Databases, and which DMVs are missing from Azure SQL Databases but still exist on SQL Server 2019 or other versions?
Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - T-SQL REST API Integration in SQL Server 2025: Streamlining T-SQL Snapshot Backups

aen from Anthony Nocentino Blog

In this post, I’ll walk you through a T-SQL script that creates application-consistent snapshots on Pure Storage FlashArray, all from within SQL Server, no external tooling. SQL Server 2025...
Blog Post

From the SQL Server Central Blogs - KDA: Echoes of Deception - Case 2

Zikato from StraightforwardSQL

The people of Digitown are being targeted by phishermen, and they need my help to stop them in their tracks.
The problem

The police have asked for our assistance, and we’ve...
Introduction to PostgreSQL for the data professional

Introduction to PostgreSQL for the data professional

Site Owners from SQLServerCentral

Adoption and use of PostgreSQL is growing all the time. From mom-and-pop shops to large enterprises, more data is being managed by PostgreSQL. In turn, this means that more data professionals need to learn PostgreSQL even when they have experience with other databases. While the documentation around PostgreSQL is detailed and technically rich, finding a simple, clear path to learning what it is, what it does, and how to use it can be challenging. This book seeks to help with that challenge.

 

  Question of the Day

Today's question (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor):
 

Calculating Month End
I want to calculate the end of the previous month as a date that I can use in running a report. What is the best way to do this in SQL Server 2022, assuming I have a date stored in @d?

Think you know the answer? Click here, and find out if you are right.
 

 

  Yesterday's Question of the Day (by Steve Jones - SSC Editor)

A Basic Data API Builder ADD

What parameters are required for the dab add command in the Data API Builder?

Answer: the source table, the key fields, a name for the API item, and permissions for the API

Explanation: To add an item, you need a name for the item, the source table, the key field(s) and permissions. Ref: DAB Command line verbs and options - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-api-builder/reference-command-line-interface#command-line-verbs-and-options

Discuss this question and answer on the forums

 

 

 

Database Pros Who Need Your Help

Here's a few of the new posts today on the forums. To see more, visit the forums.
SQL Server 2016 - Development and T-SQL
Question on SQL Query with NOT condition - I have a record, in those the three columns where firstname / last name and full name is empty. ID = 198765 FirstName = empty LastName = empty FullName = empty Flag = 0 I am trying to pull the record with ID 198765 out from select query where first and last or full name […]
SQL Server 2019 - Administration
Deadlocks and Backups - Need help - Hey everyone, please excuse my ignorance, I'm just .NET developer and have used SQL for years, but as someone pulling and manipulating data, but not much in the realm of administration or in this case troubleshooting deadlocks. I've tried to get my higher ups to get a db expert but it seems this task has […]
Building Flame Diagram for MSSQL stored procedures - I wanted to share with you tools from my personal toolbox. If your code has many nested executions of stored procedures, you can benefit from building popular "flame diagram" of the execution time which is de facto standard for performance profiling. Here is step-by-step guide. Creation of a trace Start SQL profiler and select the […]
SQL Server 2019 - Development
Find Duplicate Rows - What’s the best way to find duplicate rows in a sql query? I heard there is a way where RC is used and it gives RC 1 for the first row and RC 2 for the duplicate row. But would like to know the syntax for it. I tried: select itemnumber , count (itemnumber ) […]
Is there an ISERROR equivalent in SS? - Hi everyone I have a SP that just failed.  Format of SP is: Select symbol, date, calc1, calc2 from sub-query It is due to bad data so I need to update the SP so it handles the scenario better.  I am proposing the following logic: CASE WHEN "calc1 has error" THEN NULL ELSE calc1 END […]
isnull, coalesce overhead - hi, one of our sister division's erp extract view is going thru at least one mod to do the equivalent of a coalesce on a column that if null brings down our dw load job. since they were doing that i asked if they could do the same on all columns that had never be […]
is there an elegant way for agent notification to show failure if any step fails - hi our corp dw load sqlagent job goes to the next step on the 14+ erp loads if they fail.  but quits notifying of failure on any cube step at the end.  most of the loads are ssis but there is some t-sql too. without making the job really ugly, is there an elegant  way […]
Merge spans with Dates Logic - --for a given member if the startdate and endate is continous we need to keep in single record and if start date and end date is not continous i need to keep in separate record for a given member.   drop table #test create table #test (ID int, startdate datetime, enddate datetime ) insert into […]
Analysis Services
Connect tabular model to excel via Power BI semantic model - I have a tabular cube, with myself included in one of the roles. I can connect to this tabular model via Excel successfully, and would now like to connect to a Power BI semantic model rather instead. However I get the attached error. I suspect there additional security needed to be defined, but unsure where. […]
Administration
Article for posting - Hello I sent you an article for posting: "Building the future with a react development company: an in-depth guide" Please reply to this email [email protected] regarding this article
SQL Server 2022 - Administration
Isolation Level in Azure SQL Database - Hello, Can you please clarify the following: In Azure SQL DB both ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION/READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT are set to ON: ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase  SET ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION ON  ALTER DATABASE MyDatabase SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON Is it sufficient to implement RCSI or I still need to add either to connection string or right to the top of the query: SET TRANSACTION  ISOLATION LEVEL  […]
SQL 2022 upgrade issues - We're about to upgrade our SQL 2017 Standard to 2022 standard.  We have 1 customer who takes a backup and restores it to their 2019 instance (so they can run Power BI reports).  We cannot postpone it, and they have asked if we could consider a BACPAC from our new 2022 to their 2019 version.  […]
SQL Server 2022 - Development
Remove ISNULL FROM left join to make SARGAble - Hi, I'm trying to make the below query SARGable by removing the ISNULL function part of the join. (Part of join in italic) Any suggestions? SELECT ..... FROM dbo.historicsummary hs LEFT JOIN dbo.Status fs ON hs.ID = fs.ID AND hs.TimeStamp >= fs.ValidFrom AND hs.TimeStamp < ISNULL(fs.ValidTo, DATEADD(d, 1, SYSDATETIME()))
New lightweight pure‑T‑SQL unit‑testing framework (T‑TEST) — feedback welcome -   Hi all, I’ve just open‑sourced T‑TEST, a tiny alternative to tSQLt that lives 100 % in T‑SQL—no CLR, no extra binaries. Why you might care one install.sql, < 10 KB of objects every proc in the tests schema is a test (auto‑discover by name convention) inline assertion functions (not SPs!) (test.assert_equals, test.fail, …) one-row recordset assertion (using […]
CAST(VARCHAR(n)) resolved performance issue? - Hi, I would love to hear if anyone can tell me why a CAST in a query can "resolve" this performance issue. Same symptom on test server with a copy of the database. weblab_reportlog = 207 850 195 rows Requisitions = 30 143 466 rows DBCC FREEPROCCACHE SELECT [LID], [Datestamp], [logmessage], [Reporttype], [UserID] FROM [dbo].[weblab_reportlog] […]
 

 

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