What is the best transition from Microsoft Access DB Administration to modern day SQL.

[andrew666]

My company, which is a Fortune 500, currently runs the entire operations area out of Microsoft Access DBs(literally migrated to M365 a week ago). My jobs main role is to create and maintain these DB, mostly through design view. So there is not much opportunity to actually write SQL, and I’m not quite sure how to transition to the SQL that the rest of the world is using SQLServer/PostgreSQL. The code academy course seemed to give a good basic level understanding. But I am not even sure how databases work outside of Access which has buttons, forms, etc and a user friendly design view. Any suggestions?

 

[xenou]

My suggestion would be to write your SQL in SQL View which is a (very) basic text editor. Writing sql this way, instead of in design views, will help you be familiar and more skilled in basic SQL language concepts.

 

[Kyle123]

Yes, I'd echo what xenon said, and when you do actually write SQL for a server database, you'll never want to go back to Access - Access syntax is terrible (I'm looking at the required parentheses for joins!)

 

[Joe4]

I think you will be surprised how fast you pick things up.

When I first started with Access, I rememeber looking at the SQL View of queries, and thinking "WOW, who could ever write anything that complicated without the Query Builder!". Then, you find out that there are some complex queries that you cannot use Query Builder for, and you have to write the SQL code yourself. After a while (much to my own amazement), I found myself actually preferring to write the SQL code directly as opposed to using the Query Builder!

One complaint I have about the SQL View is that the code is all unstructured, which makes it look harder than it really is. I will often copy and paste it out to Word and structure it myself, so it is easier to read/follow. A good learning exercise is to create various queries in Query Builder, go to SQL View, and copy and paste out to Word and structure it. Then you can see what the SQL code for various kind of queries should look like.

The other complaint I have about the SQL View is that they get a little crazy with parentheses in the Criteria clause of your query (often using many more than is really necessary). But that is just a minor annoyance.

 

[Joe4]

And here is a nice, little on-line tutorial for learning how to write SQL code: SQL Tutorial