Need Advice on What I should learn for Summer Programming job

[epocaliptic]

So a friend of mine who did his undergrad in Comp Sci. got me a summer job for the university I attend as a computer science student (just finished my second year in undergrad).

He told me that the job is basically working with databases using Microsoft access to "clean them up/format them" while they are doing something with them (sorry I'm still a little bit murky about what the job exactly is to be honest).

He said that it shouldn't be too challenging for me and that I will be working with access/sql/vba. I've never worked with any of these, so I want to go in with at least some idea of what I am doing.

I start the job in about 3 weeks and I was wondering if somebody had any advice on books I should buy or what I should start to learn first (access,sql,vba)?

Thank you.

[Gadd]

Lolol 3 weeks ... dude, I say good luck to you my sir. First of all I think you should take a look at mysql and databasing with access... simple rlly you just mess around with sessions and what not work with getting a login page going and maybe a forum if you have time. As for cleaning the code up thats just up to you to do your job I suppose. Taking a book on server side code wouldn't hurt. 3 weeks.. gosh man.. gl?! I bet you can do it I used to do Server side code in SteelArrow a language created by them and I got to learn it in the co-op I took. They had a nice book that had a learn in 2 weeks so you could try picking up one of those and spending 3 weeks on it. Also it wouldnt hurt to learn that basic HTML!!!(creating tables, creating input, creating body, header, style type..) maybe u can ask your friend to fetch you some code see what you will be working with. Anyways man take care and gratz on the job!!

http://www.webbasedprogramming.com/MySQL/Teach%20Yourself%20MySQL%20in%2021%20Days.pdf
this will help, good to keep handy.. I still recommend a book to use to take with you to work for referencing and what not.

also http://www.w3schools.com/html/
this is for your basic HTML!

and
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp MySQL
PHP is also on that site so you should take a quick look at it too.

[ProgrammingFun]

Gadd @ Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:35 pm wrote:

also http://www.w3schools.com/html/
this is for your basic HTML!

and
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp MySQL
PHP is also on that site so you should take a quick look at it too.

See http://w3fools.com/

[epocaliptic]

thank you for the quick response,

it's going to be in Microsoft access he said though, so don't I need SQL not mySQL?

and what about the VBA and learning access, should I not focus on those?

[Gadd]

yea you should .. but bro were talking too many things for 3 weeks ahah and ProgrammingFun, I said use it for reference purpose I didnt say learn from it.. I would recommend and html book but he doesnt need it honestly.. W3schools is perfectly fine site to be used for those who know a little and wanna check back.. First tell me what are the languages you know now? I advice you look at turing rlly quick see the walkthough and then VBA turing will be nice to explain things toy uo and then u can learn the code in VBA.. access is easy trust me once you understand it its fine. And yes sorry just learn SQL.. ahaha sorry forgot. have fun!bttr get started some times soon. (here in the forums u can ask for help ;D)

[epocaliptic]

I've worked with C,Python,Java,Verilog.

[mirhagk]

ProgrammingFun @ Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:48 pm wrote:

Gadd @ Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:35 pm wrote:

also http://www.w3schools.com/html/
this is for your basic HTML!

and
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp MySQL
PHP is also on that site so you should take a quick look at it too.

See http://w3fools.com/

W3Schools is a great introduction to web development, and serves as a quick reminder for various things that you might forget because of how little you use them. The common structure and the vast amount of information it covers makes it a great reference, and most other references are incomplete, or not well structured (taking longer to search through them then it would to just guess and check it yourself until you got it right). Yes it should not be the only resource you use when you learn something, but to be honest, if you are learning everything about a subject from a single source (no matter the source) you have no one to blame but yourself when you are misinformed. Until a suitable replacement is found W3schools is still an amazing resource.

And for Ecopalictic, you should learn the basics of how databases work, as well as look through some vb examples, but I think access should be your focus (with some on SQL as well). vb is pretty basic, and if you understand programming enough it takes almost no time to learn.

[2goto1]

epocaliptic @ Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:22 pm wrote:

He told me that the job is basically working with databases using Microsoft access to "clean them up/format them" while they are doing something with them (sorry I'm still a little bit murky about what the job exactly is to be honest).

He said that it shouldn't be too challenging for me and that I will be working with access/sql/vba. I've never worked with any of these, so I want to go in with at least some idea of what I am doing.

Microsoft Access is two products in one. First, it's a relational database management system like MySQL, Oracle, etc. Second, it's an IDE that allows you to develop client server desktop applications. Yep, client server. Popularized in the good old mid 90's and earlier.

That being said, Microsoft Access has the capability to integrate with other platforms. For example, you can develop an IDE using Access that doesn't leverage the Access RDBMS, but instead uses most other common database platforms (SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, etc.). You can also use just the database portion of Access, and hook it up to any other development platform running on the Windows platform - PHP, .NET, Java, etc. Although you won't find that very often, not even Microsoft .NET applications talking to Microsoft Access databases since Microsoft provides a free yet very capable version of their SQL Server database.

Based on the description of the job, you'll likely be doing stuff more on the data side (sql) and the client-server development stuff (vba). Getting familiar with SQL and database normalization theory would be worthwhile, as well as picking up a book on Access development. There's likely no web related stuff you'll be doing in that job other than Googling how to accomplish stuff in Access. Have fun!

[2goto1]

Gadd @ Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:35 pm wrote:

Lolol 3 weeks ... dude, I say good luck to you my sir. First of all I think you should take a look at mysql and databasing with access... simple rlly you just mess around with sessions and what not work with getting a login page going and maybe a forum if you have time. As for cleaning the code up thats just up to you to do your job I suppose. Taking a book on server side code wouldn't hurt. 3 weeks.. gosh man.. gl?! I bet you can do it I used to do Server side code in SteelArrow a language created by them and I got to learn it in the co-op I took. They had a nice book that had a learn in 2 weeks so you could try picking up one of those and spending 3 weeks on it. Also it wouldnt hurt to learn that basic HTML!!!(creating tables, creating input, creating body, header, style type..) maybe u can ask your friend to fetch you some code see what you will be working with. Anyways man take care and gratz on the job!!

http://www.webbasedprogramming.com/MySQL/Teach%20Yourself%20MySQL%20in%2021%20Days.pdf
this will help, good to keep handy.. I still recommend a book to use to take with you to work for referencing and what not.

also http://www.w3schools.com/html/
this is for your basic HTML!

and
http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp MySQL
PHP is also on that site so you should take a quick look at it too.

Sorry but this is all garbage Gadd aka Velocity. None of this other than SQL will be likely applicable to his job. Why on earth would you recommend PHP, MySQL and web development? You should really try to tone down the pulling advice out of your butt hairs. He would be totally ill advised and would waste all of his time following your suggestions.

[DemonWasp]

You shouldn't have to buy any books -- most of the technology you mention is built to be very plug-and-play and easy to learn. Provided you have Windows and Office, you've got a copy of Access. If not, you can download a trial to get familiar: http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/access/ . VBA is similarly built into the Office suite, so assuming you have that, you've got everything you need. Try a brief tutorial so you know how to find things. Set up a few databases and get comfortable creating, destroying, altering, updating, etc.

You will need to learn the basics of SQL. You need to know data manipulation (select to find things, update to change, insert to add new and delete to remove). You also need to know data definition, such as create table and alter table.

You should make sure to learn all about being CAREFUL with SQL commands. If you use update, alter table, drop table, drop database and the like, it is very easy to destroy a lot of data very quickly (instantly, even). Experienced programmers will often write UPDATE statements as SELECT statements first to make sure they're updating the right set of rows.

I have no experience with Access or VBA specifically. You might find a decent tutorial at any of the following sites:
- http://www.techonthenet.com/access/tutorials/index.php
- http://www.functionx.com/vbaccess/Lesson01.htm
- http://www.vtc.com/products/Microsoft-Visual-Basic-for-Access-tutorials.htm

I strongly urge you to remember that VBA is "programming lite", and that Access is a toy database. These are tools designed to allow accountants and managers to write small data-handling applications quickly without really learning much about programming. If you are intending to (eventually) work with real databases, you will probably want to pick up some MySQL or PostgreSQL experience (free non-toy databases). You will also want to pick up a more powerful language (such as anything other than VB or Turing; even VB.Net is better).

[Gadd]

Lol, you use the basics of html in SQL do do things like create tables and make the things we click and type in right here... it's up to the database like access to store the input and keep it in something called a session (if thats where you direct it to) then you can use it.. for example my username,log-in and so forth. But you can have your opinion over things I never said I was right you don't need to be a jack ass over things. Someone with clear intention to help may explain to someone like myself why I wouldn't use PHP to help me with SQL and why not to learn the HTML basics.. But, sir you have yourself a splended day.

[DemonWasp]

Gadd @ Wed Apr 11, 2012 2:54 pm wrote:

Lol, you use the basics of html in SQL do do things like create tables and make the things we click and type in right here... it's up to the database like access to store the input and keep it in something called a session (if thats where you direct it to) then you can use it.. for example my username,log-in and so forth. But you can have your opinion over things I never said I was right you don't need to be a jack ass over things. Someone with clear intention to help may explain to someone like myself why I wouldn't use PHP to help me with SQL and why not to learn the HTML basics.. But, sir you have yourself a splended day.

There is a lot of misinformation there.

1. The database does not manage the session. Session is managed by your web server and your framework (or, rarely, by your code). If you're using PHP, then PHP manages it. If you're using Java (servlets) then your servlet container manages it. If you're writing a native client then you probably manage that yourself.

2. Session data is also not stored in the database; you have to explicitly send data to the database to store it there.

3. Learning several new languages (PHP, HTML) isn't going to help with learning SQL. SQL is also relatively well-designed compared to PHP / HTML.

[2goto1]

DemonWasp @ Thu Apr 12, 2012 8:16 am wrote:

There is a lot of misinformation there.

1. The database does not manage the session. Session is managed by your web server and your framework (or, rarely, by your code). If you're using PHP, then PHP manages it. If you're using Java (servlets) then your servlet container manages it. If you're writing a native client then you probably manage that yourself.

2. Session data is also not stored in the database; you have to explicitly send data to the database to store it there.

3. Learning several new languages (PHP, HTML) isn't going to help with learning SQL. SQL is also relatively well-designed compared to PHP / HTML.

Definitely lots of misinformation on Gadd's part. He would be better off learning how to ask a question when he's unsure of something instead of making a statement that he's unsure of, hoping that he learns something when someone eventually corrects him.

One point re session data is that technically some session persistence strategies use either in-memory, file system, or database for their persistence from request to request. Although most web development frameworks make this transparent - you simply configure your preferred persistence strategy - session state can indeed be saved in a database. A clustered web server architecture could take this approach, or an approach such as a distributed object cache like memcached, so that session state could be preserved when routing HTTP requests from one server in a cluster to another.