Will this be easy

[briggsy79]

Hi all (im new to these parts of town)
A computer technician has asked to look at a database, and see if i could create one like it (but better) in SQL. I have never used SQL before and even had trouble installing it - i have win2000 prof (and SQL server 2000 standard edition).
He wants this database to get data from an electronic testing device. After the results of each test are gathered the database will analyse cetain values, and see if numbers are decreasing at a certain rate etc etc.

My main question is will a person with no real SQL knowledge (except for the SQl comands used in creating databases with a VB front end) be able to create such a database? Obviously i will do some research on the net, and also find as many books as possible, but could i create it?


Thank you so much, i know the question is very vague but even pointing me in the right starting direction will be of great benefit.


-David

 

[SQLSister]

How simple this will be for you will depend in part on what type of databases you've been using for your back end in the past. If you are familiar with something like Oracle, you should be able to changeover failry quickly. But if you have been using Access for your back-end, you will have a lot of totally new concepts to deal with (I know because this is where I came from).

You'll still need to build a front end and your visual basic skills are fine for that. You'll want to call stored procedures rather than send sql statements (Stored procedures run faster), but that too is relatively simple to learn to call from the vb code.

On the database side you will face alot of new territory unless you've been working with Oracle or some other major relational database program.

Actually building tables and stored procedures to query and manipulate the tables is not too hard if you know any SQL at all You will need to learn the T-SQL flavor of SQL however.

But SQL server also requires database administration which many of the smaller database programs essentially do not. You'll need to learn about security, data transformation services, backups and restores, possibly replication, log shipping and storing information across different servers depending on the size of this project, performance tuning, management tasks like scheduling jobs and setting up alerts to let you know when problems are happening, etc. then of course, you have to learn how to fix the problems when they happen. You'll need to learn about transactions and transaction logging because the smaller dbs don't do this.

Then of course once you have created the db, someone will have to become the dba which you or your customer may have never had before.

Incidentally I'm not suprised you had install problems. SQL Server 2000 (Standard) should be running on Windows 2000 server edition (or other server oriented Windows products, see Books online for the complete list). It should not be run on Windows Professional. If you didn't change to this to get it installed, I wouldn't be surprised if you had a lot of quirky problems in running the db once you build it.

 

[briggsy79]

Hmmmm
Yeh well my previous back ends have been made with Access. And even then i didnt really use access to do anything other than make up tables and fields. All the rest was done with VB.

So i will need to make a VB front end?
SQL doesnt have its own front end (i know this may be a really stupid question but i dont have a clue)?


Thanks again.

 

[SQLSister]

Yes, you will need to create a front end. While you can do any database-oriented tasks through the use of stored procedures, scripts, query analyzer or Enterprise Manager, it would be a bad idea for users to try to use these tools directly as they require much more understanding of relational databases and T-SQL than users are likely to have. Also the front end is a tool to help keep users from doing accidental damage in case they didn't know what they were doing but thought they did.