krowley (8/29/2011)
Where do your page counts come from? Are there a set of books you have that you pulled these from, or are these from some online documentation?I am working on moving from being a generalist to being a specialist in SQL Server and keep looking for the best course of study to take me there. If there was a simple well laid out path, even one that was 2000 pages long, this would be very helpful for me and others like me.
Instead what I often get in conflicting information on where to even start with the most common thread of an answer being "it depends" 🙂 which I understand to be correct but it still not very helpful.
Don't believe there is a series of books/courses that when followed, makes you a good specialist. They will however help with the groundwork and teach you the concepts used in the field. In other words, there exists no quick fix...not to us humans at least. Anyone can read a series of books and most can pass tests after some practice, but applying the gained information effectively requires more and not all of the skill set is technical. Sometimes it is more a matter of asking the right questions at the right time to the right people!
Some ideas to help you progress faster:
* Practice a lot, try different solutions to problems and compare these properly (on very large volumes of data);
* Find a mentor that can help you out when you find yourself blocked on a problem;
* Forums are a great source of problems, ideas and solutions (always compare them to your own);
And once you get a job, make sure you are NOT the master on the subject right away. Because once you are and you get a lot of work to do, you will not have a lot of time analyzing various solutions anymore. It is better if you can learn on the job from someone already more experienced IMHO.