Not a DBA (Part 2) and Some Quick Hits

Since my last post, I picked up a copy of SQL Tuning by Dan Tow. This is exactly the resource I've been looking for. Dan Tow has developed a process of diagramming queries, and then using these diagrams to determine an optimized query plan. I'm only half finished with the book, and I'm amazed by the results I'm already seeing. This book has given me a new perspective (and confidence) to solve the problems I described.

I'll post more on my progress in a future post.

Ruby

For a while now, I've wanted to learn Ruby (and Rails). I'm impressed with how much you can do with this language in a few lines of code. If nothing else, it will provide a quick and easy way to mock up prototypes.

Last week, I downloaded Hackety Hack, which is a lightweight Ruby IDE. I've completed the Hackety Hack tutorial and can't wait to create more complex examples.

del.icio.us

I've started to (finally) place my bookmarks into del.icio.us. I thought I'd link to it from here to make it easy to see the things I've been looking at.

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