What might someone searching for training tracks certified by Microsoft expect to discover? Obviously, training companies should give access to a number of courses that cover the range of Microsoft certified training tracks. Perhaps you’d hope to have a discussion on the careers you might go for once you have passed your exams, and the type of individual that work might be right for. Lots of people like to discuss what would be best for them. Once you’ve decided on the career track for you, a relevant course must be picked that’s goes with your skills and abilities. You should expect to be offered a bespoke package for your needs.

Finding your first job in the industry can be a little easier if you’re supported with a Job Placement Assistance facility. But don’t place too much emphasis on it – it’s quite easy for their marketing department to overplay it. The fact of the matter is, the need for well trained IT people in Great Britain is what will enable you to get a job.

Get your CV updated straight-away though (advice can be sought on this via your provider). Don’t delay for when you’re ready to start work. You may not have got to the stage where you’ve got to the exam time when you will be offered your first junior support position; but this is not possible if interviewers don’t get sight of your CV. In many cases, an independent and specialised local employment service (who will, of course, be keen to place you to receive their commission) is going to give you a better service than a division of a training company. It also stands to reason that they’ll know the local industry and employment needs.

Just be sure that you don’t put hundreds of hours of effort into your studies, then call a halt and expect somebody else to find you a job. Stand up for yourself and get out there. Put as much energy and enthusiasm into landing your new role as you did to gain the skills.

Don’t get hung-up, as many people do, on the training course itself. You’re not training for the sake of training; you’re training to become commercially employable. Focus on the end-goal. It’s an awful thing, but the majority of trainees kick-off study that often sounds magnificent from the prospectus, but which gets us a career that is of no interest. Talk to many university students and you’ll see where we’re coming from.

Stay focused on what it is you’re trying to achieve, and build your study action-plan from that – don’t do it the other way round. Keep your eyes on your goals and ensure that you’re training for an end-result that will keep you happy for many years. Long before starting a study program, it makes sense to chat over the specific market needs with an experienced advisor, to make sure the training programme covers all the necessary elements.

Typically, a new trainee will not know to ask about a vitally important element – the way the company actually breaks down and delivers the course ware, and into what particular chunks. Training companies will normally offer some sort of program spread over 1-3 years, and drop-ship the materials to you piecemeal as you finish each section. This sounds reasonable until you consider the following: Often, the staged breakdown pushed by the company’s salespeople doesn’t suit all of us. It may be difficult to get through all the sections inside their defined time-scales?

In an ideal situation, you want ALL the study materials up-front – so you’ll have them all to come back to at any time in the future – irrespective of any schedule. Variations can then be made to the order that you move through the program where a more intuitive path can be found.

When did you last consider how safe your job is? Typically, we only think of this after something goes wrong. However, The cold truth is that our job security simply doesn’t exist anymore, for most of us. But a quickly growing market-place, where staff are in constant demand (because of a growing shortage of fully trained professionals), opens the possibility of lasting job security.

A recent national e-Skills investigation showed that twenty six percent of all available IT positions cannot be filled because of a huge deficit of appropriately certified professionals. Meaning that for every four jobs that exist around Information Technology (IT), we’ve only got three properly trained pro’s to fill that need. Accomplishing proper commercial IT exams is therefore an effective route to a continuing as well as gratifying profession. Undoubtedly, this really is the very best time to retrain into the computer industry.

This article will demonstrate an easy way to create dynamic CSS-based navigation menus that allow you to change your website navigation sitewide with one simple MySQL database update. For this example, I will be using the Chrome CSS Drop Down Menu available from Dynamic Drive. It’s a free, lightweight CSS menu that is easily customizable and only uses a small amount of JavaScript. There are other free CSS menus available such as the Suckerfish menu and other commercial menu options are available.

This article assumes the reader is somewhat familiar with Dreamweaver, PHP and MySQL. Powering your navigation menu from a database allows you to easily change your website’s navigation menu simply by updating the database fields that make up the Dreamweaver recordset. Building your site navigation using CSS also allows for quick sitewide changes via the stylesheet formatting.

The first step is to implement the CSS menu of your choice. It’s useful to include several mock menu items as you style your menu so you can see how the menu will appear with multiple navigation choices. Once your menu is in place, go back and delete all but the first menu item in the HTML unordered list.

The second step is to create your MySQL database table which will power your menu. Using the MySQL manager of your choice, create a table which includes three fields: a unique auto-numbering ID field, a field which will hold the text displayed by each menu option, and a hyperlink field, which will include the link each menu item follows when clicked. Depending on your site structure, you can use relative or absolute URLs in this field. At this point, insert data into the database table which will populate the site when loaded. For example, in the first table row, you could have the menu text “HOME” and the URL “index.php”.

Next, back to Dreamweaver to set up the dynamic menu. With your page open, establish a connection to the MySQL database and create the menu recordset. Include all database fields and don’t use any filters on the data. Back in the code, find the first menu item that you left in place earlier. Highlight the text between the quotation marks after the href portion of code. Go into your bindings panel and open the recordset you created for the menu. Click and drag the field representing the link URL field into your code where you highlighted the href link. This will create the PHP code to dynamically assign the link for each menu item. Next, highlight the code in your menu item that will display the browser text for each menu item. Grab the corresponding recordset binding and drag it into your code. This will create the required PHP code that will dynamically display each menu item.

The last step in the process is to create the repeating region that will loop for each database table row. Simply highlight all code from the opening to the closing li tags surrounding the menu item. Go to your server behaviors panel in Dreamweaver and select the “Repeated Region” option. Select the correctrecordset for the menu and click the radio button selecting all records. That completes the dynamic menu creation.

After uploading the page to your testing server, you will see each menu item you entered in your database displayed in your menu. The dynamically generated links will all point to the corresponding pages. If you view the page code, you can see it renders a clean list for the menu items. The code is short and simple and very search engine friendly. For added functionality and the creation of the drop-down menus, simply create a database table that includes the sublinks and include a table field which will hold the parent table ID value. Simply filter by ID for each main menu option, and dynamically generate the submenu the same way you did the main menu. The menu can then be included in a Dreamweaver template for inclusion on every page of your website. When a page is added to the site, simply add the menu item and link in your database and it will appear on every page that includes the navigation menu. It doesn’tget much easier than that to create dynamic database-driven CSS menus.

If there is one database that is the backbone of some of the biggest applications in the world – it is MySQL. It is perhaps the world’s most popular open source database. What makes MySQL and the job of a MySQL developer special are the database’s proven performance, reliability, and ease-of-use. These qualities have made it the leading database of choice for web-based applications. It is used by some of the world’s best-known applications that billions of people use every day. Some of the big names on the list are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yahoo! And much more.

It is run by Oracle, which makes sure innovation keeps the database the top choice for MySQL developers. It consistently delivers new capabilities to power next generation the web, cloud, mobile and embedded applications.

For those wishing to learn the technology – a MySQL developer is taught how to develop console and web applications using MySQL. The choices of languages you have are PHP, Java, or Python for programming purpose.

There are a number of courses available out there that teach you how to be a good MySQL developer and get ahead in your career. There is ample of documentation available and a MySQL developer can develop an application around MySQL using that. What is challenging is managing the MySQL instances while ensuring performance, availability, and security is not compromised. This is what a seasoned developer is capable of achieving.

When hiring a skilled MySQL developer, you need to make sure he has strong proficiency in MySQL database management. He has decent experience with recent versions of MySQL. Make sure his understanding of things like MySQL’s underlying storage engines, such as InnoDB and MyISAM is good. His abilities should coincide with what you are looking for. Look out of his experience with replication configuration in MySQL.

A good MySQL developer should have the knowledge of de-facto standards and best practices in the database. Check for his proficiency in writing and optimizing SQL statements. Things like – his knowledge of MySQL features, such as its event schedule and his ability to plan resource requirements from high-level specifications is a good indicator of his caliber.

Additionally, look for his familiarity with other SQL/NoSQL databases such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc. Above all, it is important for a good MySQL developer to have good knowledge of limitations in MySQL and their workarounds in contrast to other popular relational databases.

Have you noticed when you open an Access database that it generates another (same named) file but with a locking file extension of either an LDB (Microsoft Access 2003 or earlier) or LACCDB (Microsoft Access 2007 or later)?

This file should automatically generate and extinguish itself when opening and closing your Access database and the upshot is that you do not need to do anything with it unless you want to.

What is and Why have a locking file?

First of all it's a safe and harmless file which rides along with your opened database file in the same location and is not a virus (as one IT trainer once tried to impress and proudly inform me!).

It's used to keep track of one or more users who are currently working on the same database and therefore plays the role of keeping a log of multiple users with their machine name and user name.

You can view this file in a plain text editor though some editors might return odd characters (try using Microsoft Word instead of Notepad) and you will see the machine name and user name listed for members currently using the Access database file.

When the last individual closes the shared Access database, it will automatically delete the locking file (well in most cases). However, this doesn't always delete itself and ideally you should physically delete it yourself assuring you of no harm is done.

How do I use it?

I use it in my Access database to view who is currently logged in the database should I need to manage users via different features like sending internal flags and messages to them and that's it really as it will not be a live list of users and update quick enough.

But this file is not created when a user opens the Microsoft Access database file in exclusive mode which means they are the only person who can gain access making this file redundant.

According to me, Giving a deadly desired storm to your brain might yield to an ‘invention.’

What is SMO?

Server Management Object (SMO) is Microsoft® .NET Framework library of objects that let you manage one or more database servers. SMO can be used to examine a database’s objects and to perform a variety of administrative tasks like backing up and restoring databases, and issuing Data Definition Language (DDL) commands. Using SQL SMO you can also connect to SQL Server, iterate through a collection of database objects and perform a variety of tasks against them.

Let me demonstrate the use of SMO for dynamically creating of Stored Procedures and Database Tables.

For start up, let us first reference the appropriate assemblies that use SMO.

The two main DLLs you must reference are:

1. Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo.dll
2. Microsoft.SqlServer.ConnectionInfo.dll

You will also need the following assembly for creating indexes for primary key:

Microsoft.SqlServer.SqlEnum.dll

After adding the above assemblies let’s begin Dynamic Creation of Stored Procedure and Database Tables.

Dynamically Creating Database Tables

Below is a simple Code that creates the database table known as tblEmployee in my personal database Employee with a primary key and identity on the “ID” column.

//Establish Conection

SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection

(“Server=;DATABASE=;uid=;pwd=”);

//Create Server instance

Server server = new Server(new ServerConnection(conn));

//Create Database Instance from existing databases

Database database = server.Databases[“Employee”];

//Create Table

Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Table table = new

Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Table(database, “tblEmployee”);

As any person, who remodeled their home, will tell you that “choosing the right tool for the right job” makes all the difference. The same statement applies when choosing the right database for a project. Some databases are basic, some are “battery operated” and some are “mighty power tools.” Below is a guide on selecting the perfect database for the right project.

When you only need to store a limited amount of data and require a quick and easy development cycle, Microsoft Access is the right tool for you. It provides a powerful set of database and graphical user interface tools that allows the user to quickly organize, access and share information. Since Access is part of the Microsoft family of office products, it easily integrates with Excel, Word and SQL Server. In addition, it supports Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). However, if the database is going to hit 1GB threshold, you may encounter various performance issues, including slow response and record corruption. Microsoft Access is an equivalent of a Swiss army knife. Each part individually is not as impressive; however, when combined together, it produces an appealing solution.

My SQL is a viable alternative to Microsoft Access. Major advantages of My SQL are the low cost (licensing starts below $500) and platform independence (it can be installed on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and UNIX operating systems). My SQL does not, however, come with the development interface tools that Microsoft Access provides and would require the use of a programming language, such as Visual Basic, C, etc., to create user interface and reporting. This is your battery-operated power tool!

Microsoft SQL Server is a powerful alternative to My SQL and Oracle. It is moderately priced and yet quite powerful and scalable. It provides a user administration module capable of handling user, group and column-level security. Record-retrieval speed of the SQL Server outperforms both Microsoft Access and My SQL. In addition, Microsoft SQL Server is highly scalable. This is your power tool!

Oracle is the oldest of the relational database management systems (RDBMS) discussed in this overview and the most powerful. However, it is also the most expensive and most difficult to implement. Oracle is highly scalable and allows storage of a tremendous amount of records without jeopardizing performance. Like Microsoft SQL Server, it has a powerful user administration module. This is the mighty power tool!

When selecting the right tool for your next database project, keep in mind the following:

Comparison Matrix and Cost and Functionality chart are available at www.cxtgroup.com/diy_db.pdf

Once you have identified your tables, and have listed all the possible fields that will make up your tables including a 'common' field which is going to be the link to other tables forming the relational database ( one of Microsoft Access database strengths ), you are now ready to create your relational database.

The Table Design Process (including the Relationships)

So now you have a list of the tables, fields and their data types and in order to utilize Access as a true RDBMS (relational database management system), you will need to create the relationships between tables (and in some instances, queries too) .

In order to join two tables together, there are rules that must be observed which are:

1. Field Data Types – the fields which are to be joined across two tables must be the same type of data. Therefore a 'Text' data type cannot join to a 'Number' type field.

The exception to the above is a 'Number' type can join to a 'AutoNumber' type providing both are set to same size (ie a Long Integer) .

2. Field Sizes – applies to only the 'Text' , 'Number' and 'AutoNumber' data types where the size or length of a field can be modified. For the numeric types, the size must be the same and therefore a 'Number' type field size in one table which is set to 'Double' cannot join to a field whose size is set for example to 'Integer' .

The 'Text' data type is a little more relaxed as the joining field must be at least the same length (or greater) of characters (bytes)

Note: It is possible to join different field sizes with 'Number' data types provided the field can be cast and fit into the larger size. This is not good practice and in any event shouldn't the data type be the same across tables for the same data value?

3. Field Names? – this is not essential as field names are not checked when joining tables together. But for user-friendliness, having the same field name makes life just a little bit easier!

The success of creating a relationship is driven by the process of setting primary and foreign keys which indexes fields in a table.

This step simply is the principle to create a relational database and produces the database architecture required before moving onto the 'front-end' process.

The essential element is the mandatory primary key (the 'one' side of a relationship) . The foreign key (sometimes referred as the 'secondary' key) is optional but will help with the speed of running queries if enabled and applied.

The type of key applied will lead to the type of Access relationship you can have and in essence there are four:

1. One-to-one
2. One-to-many
3. Many-to-one
4. Many-to-many ( requires three tables )

The 'one' side is associated to a unique value for a field and is referred as the primary key. The 'many' side is an indexed field which allow for duplicate values ​​in a field and is known as the foreign or secondary key.

I was designing a database with a lot of forms. To make it user friendly, I had to add numerous buttons on these forms so the users could easily get to the other forms they needed. Using the Access Button Wizard was adding a lot of code to my Database. It was growing faster than the National Debt. Fortunately I discovered a simple solution to avoid adding all that code and the database bloat that goes with it.

Instead of adding code to your forms to open other forms, you can use this simple Function to open your forms. You can add this Function to an existing Module or create a new module (not a Form, Report, or Class Module but a regular module in the Modules group).

You can start by copying the following code to a Module:

Public Function Openmyfrm(myfrmname As String)

DoCmd.OpenForm myfrmname

End Function

That was easy wasn’t it? But the best is yet to come. How do you get this Function to open your form? With just one little line in the On Click event of a button

=Openmyfrm(“YOURFORMNAME”)

That’s it! The Function accepts the form name between the quotes as a String because we told it to do that when we added (myfrmname As String) to the Function. It then uses that form name as a variable with the DoCmd.OpenForm code.

You need to add the =Openmyfrm(“YOURFORMNAME”) expression to the On Click Event of a Button. (I am using all caps to indicate where you need to add the name of your form).

In case you need help, here’s how to add the expression to a button: Open your form in design view. Click on the button on the tool bar and place a new button on your form. The Button Wizard fires up. I just click Cancel and I have a new button ready to use. I change the Caption on the button to something like Open Customers Form.

Then open the button’s property sheet. You can do that by right clicking on the button and selecting “Properties”. Next, click on the “Event” tab. Find the white area beside the On Click Event. Add the expression with the name of the Form you want to open between the quotes.

You are finished! (Don’t forget to add some error handling to your Function).

Maintaining backup of mission critical data is of paramount importance for any organization which help to recover data with minimum downtime thereby avoiding any discontinuity in business activities. You need to include different backup strategies while keeping in mind the cost of its implementation, Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives. Consider the below mentioned measures in this regard:-

1. Full Backup
2. Differential Backup
3. Transaction Log

Full Backup: – Full backup process creates a complete mirror image of all the data. This is the safest and universally adopted method to recoup with the disaster. The point to take care is that even though this is the safest way but it is also time-consuming. If you want to restore data in the shortest possible time and your backup file is running to the tune of multiple terabytes, then you might need to re-strategize your plan before adopting this recovery mechanism.

Differential Backup: – In this type, a backup carries the new changes that took place since the last full backup subjected to the time specified in Differential Backup. Suppose you scheduled that the system should take complete backup every midnight and Differential Backup every 8 hours and due to some reason your database gets corrupted at 9:00AM. Now to restore and return to the state which was before the corruption you need to have the full backup plus the differential Backup but you will still be short of 1 hour database. To regain that 1 hour missing files you need to add the Transaction Log backup as well.

Transaction Log Backup: – Suppose you scheduled that the Transaction log Backup must take place every 30 minutes. Now we can compensate the one hour of database that we are short of by using the Transaction Log files.

But one must understand that it is not always possible to restore 100% data. If the same scenario would have taken place at 9:05AM then the company will lose whatever data that was not stored in that 5 minute of duration. So it totally depends upon the company to what extent they are ready to go to protect and keep their data.

Now coming back to the restore capability if the company only wants the latest data and can manage without the full Backup support they can restart their work by deploying only Differential Backup+ Transaction Log Backup or only with Transaction Log files, if the company can work smoothly with it. But before jumping the gun you need to apply all the backup combination necessary to meet the desired goals.

MS SQL Server is the relational database management and analysis system. It’s a Microsoft-product and is used for managing small to medium scale databases. Synchronization between different databases has become an important part of database management these days with the need to support mobile and remote users. This ensures that all users have access to the real-time data through a laptop, smart phone or desktop. You can simply use replication technology in SQL Server for synchronizing databases so as to eliminate redundancy and data errors.

1. Click Windows “Start” and select “Microsoft SQL Server.” Choose “Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio” to open the “Connect to Server” screen. Accept the default values or type your own “Server name” and “Server type.” Choose the appropriate “Authentication” mode and click “Connect” to link to SQL Server. You will see the “SQL Server Management Studio” screen when the server gets connected.

2. Right-click “Replication” under the “Databases” folder in the “Object Explorer” pane. Right-click “Local Subscriptions” to open the “New Subscription Wizard” window. Then Click “Next” to go to the “Publication” window.

3. Now select the database that will be the source of data synchronization. Choose the database from the available list under “Databases and publications. Then Click “Next” to open the “Distribution Agent Location” window.

4. Select either “Run all agents at the Distributor” if you want the synchronization to occur through a central agent, or “Run each agent at its Subscriber” if you need the data to be synchronized individually for all subscribers. Now Click “Next” to open the “Subscribers” window.

5. Choose all the suitable databases that are you want to synchroniz with the primary database under “Subscribers and subscription databases.” Then Click the “Add SQL Server Subscriber” tab if you wish to add more subscriber databases. Now click “Next” to open the “Synchronization Schedule” window.

6. Choose from the available list of options or select “” to give your own plan of synchronization. Then click “Next” to open the “Initialize Subscriptions” window. Now select appropriate settings and click “Next” to open the “Wizard Actions” window.

7. Now select appropriate settings and click “Next” to open the “Complete the Wizard” window. This window summarizes the actions to be taken by SQL Server for synchronizing the databases.

8. Now just read the summary and click “Finish,” starting the process. Now the progress of the whole process will be displayed in the next window.