I know more about Microsoft's database technologies than I realized. I've just finished reading Roman's Access Database Design and Programming. Each chapter was familiar, from the database design concepts to the SQL language syntax to the DAO and ADO classes and methods for accessing data.
I had worked with ADO a few years ago, writing utility program to manipulate ODBC and MS-Jet databases. The "ODBCdump" program extracted records from an ODBC database (any source type) and converted them to text for processing in pipelines. The "ODBCsql" program executed SQL commands against a database and was useful for injecting data into a database. I used both of these programs as part of the "source code statistics" system at UPS.
I had additional programs that were specific to MS-Jet databases. These had the benefit of not needing a pre-specified DSN; I could use the MDB file directly. They also extracted and inserted text. One created a crosstab extract of the data; not easy at the DAO level.
I know more about databases and SQL than I thought.
But I won't get cocky. My experience covers ODBC, DAO, and ADO, and some bits of SQL. My experience stops shy of Microsoft SQL Server, which has a lot more administration and tuning. And my experience has been with the smaller utilities, not the large systems. (But isn't it a good idea in large systems to separate the data access into a smaller section?)
I think I'm in a good position to pick up the admin bits of SQL Server and continue my career.
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