Semi OT - SQL Course

          BODY { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:12px; } Folks,

            I have launched this week-end an online SQL course that has kept me much busy for the past months. Even if you have no interest in it, I think that many of you will appreciate the trailer I have done to launch it - especially the first minute (the four last ones are blatantly commercial, you are warned). It's here:

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUB113i_mzA [1]

        The Youtube-deprived can see it, without HD, here:

        http://www.konagora.com/tutorials/video.php?courseid=2&module=26 [2]

        It was a fun project, and if you ever need to impress your in-laws ... (or worse, future in-laws).

        It's the very first time I target people who aren't supposed to already know SQL. I have attended Chris Date's presentation on using SQL in a relational way in Edinburgh one year and a half ago (it has already been announced on the list, he is giving it again at the same place during the second week of May - if you can go, it's worth it). My practice agrees with Chris' theory for about 98% (the 2% for which I may disagree are relatively minor), and it has occurred to me that instead of correcting bad habits it might be better to try to teach things properly from the start, instead of throwing syntax at people and letting them dabble with SQL with the results we all know. The two courses I have taken myself (a one day course when I was an IBM intern back in June 1983 and a three day course when I joined Oracle France in September 1986) have left me rather unimpressed, and, from what I have seen from multiple outlines here and there, there hasn't been much improvement over the quarter of a century. I hope to have done much better, even if I don't mention "tuples" even once.

        Now a call to arms - I am increasingly worried about education, and I plan to do my bit - you can read about it here:

        http://konagora.com/static/manifesto_en.php [3]

        If you have some presentations that target beginners, not necessarily on Oracle, and if you think that it might interest a wider audience than what you have had so far, don't hesitate to get in touch with me (privately). I'm quite willing to help you turn them into something that resembles what I have done, and I intend to pay royalties. I don't want specialist material, but I'm interested by foundations. Anything that would find its place in a 1st year IT/CS curriculum can be good material. And as someone who has currently sold more copies of "The Art of SQL" in Chinese than in English, I'm not exclusively focused on English. Anything in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese or Japanese can interest me - although if it's not in English or French, German to a much lesser extent, I'll have trouble helping you with editing.

        Thanks,

        Stéphane Faroult   

Links:

--
http://www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l