Evening Hours
May 20, 2008
Well, we decided to go ahead and offer evening classes, too. They will run from 5:00PM to 8:00PM. These expanded hours will allow us to offer the public more classes during the course of the week. And some will be mostly outside of normal working hours.
Tags:
evening classes, start times, training
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Microsoft Office Training
February 25, 2008
We are adding Microsoft Office courses to our catalog. We have found a couple of excellent instructors for these products. We will also be using standard CourseILT material from Thompson Learning. This helps us get the classes up and running more quickly. At first the classes will be offered only as group clases. But hey, the minimim class size will be 2 students.
Tags:
microsoft office, training
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Discussion Board
January 10, 2008
We recently set up a new discussion board. I set up one before with Matt Wright's script but it got hacked all the time. This new one is hosted on ActiveBoard and hopefully we will be able to keep it under control this time. Here is the link to
Orange Coast Database Forums.
Tags:
access, database design, discussion board, sql
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SQL Learning Magnets
January 8, 2008
Magnets? I never heard of them, either. But here is a
link to a really unusual learning tool - virtual "sticky magnets" from Head First Books. You rearrange them to create an SQL statement.
Have fun!
Tags:
sql
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Oracle SQL Developer
April 29, 2007
We have been using this tool to put together our new Oracle course. I have to say it is very nice. It has a well designed graphical interface and is very easy to use. I highly recommend people look into it. It is available as a free download from Oracle.
Tags:
oracle, sql
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Access SQL View
April 22, 2007
Just noticed the other day that you can change the font size in Access SQL View and the Query Designer. Go to Tools | Options | Tables and Queries. This is new in Access 2003 and very welcome. I used to offer a reward to students who could do it in the older versions of Access. No takers, other than using the Windows zoom features and such.
Tags:
access, sql view
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Using LIKE in queries
January 27, 2007
I just finished updating some web pages to use wildcards. The web pages have forms with fields like txtName, txtCity, etc. and are used to search a contacts database. Easy and very handy. Construct the SQL statement as in the following example...
select *
from contacts
where name LIKE '$txtFieldName';
This is Php/MySQL. VBScript/ASP would be similar. Now in the above when the use types say H followed by the standard SQL wildcard character % the user will get all contacts whose names begin with H. That is because the % means any string of 0 or more characters. Another example....
where street LIKE '$txtStreet';
Type in %Washington% and the user gets all contacts who live on Washington Street (or Boulevard, etc.).
As always in this business, there is no free lunch. The above technique can be slower than standard matches for large databases.
Tags:
mysql, php, sql, wildcards
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MS Access 2007
January 20, 2007
Whoohoo! Downloaded the Office 2007 trial today. A little less then 400 megs. Installed smoothly enough. But, boy is the interface different! Be prepared for some major re-orientation. It doesn't use menus but has what they call ribbons. They are sort of like those old dashboard launchers that were popular in the mid 90's. Lots of buttons and arrows and such in a strip 2 or 3 icons tall.
Microsoft Access, which was my interest, seemed to have pretty much the same functionality but it looks way different as above. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft offers versions with the old interface.
Tags:
access, microsoft, office
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