I am thinking about doing a computer course.It is learning about sql
to become an MCDBA.I am trying to find out how difficult this could be
as I will be doing it from home and it is going to cost over £4000 for
all the CD ROM's,books etc.You understand I don't want to start the
course only to find I can't do it.I have owned my own computer for 18
months and enjoy it.If anyone with experience can reply it would be
appreciated.

I think you might want to take a few college courses first. This
thing will only teach you the SQL programming language, but not
RDBMS. Would you learn FORTRAN without knowing algebra?

My estimate based on teaching SQL for a few decades is that it takes
an experienced programmer about one year of full-time programming to
learn SQL. Since SQL is declarative, it is not a good "first
language" for a newbie without any background.

Have you looked at computeach and their offerings?

Are you starting from scratch?

Think about coming to the SQLBits community conference in Birmingham on 1st
March (http://www.sqlbits.com) where you'll find other SQL professionals,
the content will be too deep for you but you never know.

Ps.. ignore celko he's a well know dick with an ego the size of a planet yet
has very little real world industrial experience.

--
Tony Rogerson, SQL Server MVP
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson
[Ramblings from the field from a SQL consultant]
http://sqlserverfaq.com
[UK SQL User Community]

>> Since SQL is declarative, it is not a good "first language" for a newbie
>> without any background.

That seems pretty true regarding most logic-based/ functional languages. I
have seen experienced prolog folks giving the same advice to freshers.
Whether it someone in a "get-a-job-now" mindset really cares about it or not
is another matter.

--
Anith

>> That seems pretty true regarding most logic-based/ functional languages. I have seen experienced prolog folks giving the same advice to freshers. <<

LOL! When I was in college, the Atlanta school system decided to APL
as the teaching language in the High Schools and bought special
keyboards from IBM. Then they hired some graduates to program their
applications in the city schools. It was a disaster.