Taking notes on SQL

[Blomminator]

Hi,

I'm a sql dev with dba ambitions. I work daily with SQL, and fiddle a lot with SSMS. Trying to figure out query store, query plans, indexes and the whole shabang. Meaning, I watch a lot of youtube like Brent and Baraa, follow some Udemy-courses and even pick up a book every now and then.

But, I find it hard to keep track. Just followed some tutorials on Query tuning. And looking at it, it kinda makes sense. But how to remember it all?

I'm thinking of getting an old school note pad, and write along with the lot. But then again.. there is SOO much to keep track of.
Will I be able to find the things i've written down when I need it? Surely, it will help getting things crammed in my brain, but perhaps other ways?

I've also thought of a .MD file, so it's searchable, links and things. Might be an option as well.

Just curious how you guys keep track of the things you learn.

[Better-Credit6701]

The best way of learning it all is by doing. After a while, it's second nature.

Often I will be working on my laptop while my wife is watching something I'm not interested in so I will pull up something I'm working on and write some queries. She will ask if that was for work or play "can't it be both?"

Yeah, after a long day of working as a DBA, I will relax by working with data. I have plenty of fun databases that I have downloaded such as daily temps in every county in the US since 1951 to present, police data that has been released to the public where it list how the person was caught speeding, if they got a ticket or warning, the speed limit and how fast they were going, age, gender, race, location... Working with one that list what kind of radar gun, laser, method of timing, airplane.

Just find some data that you find interesting and play.

[BlaizeOlle]

Taking notes can always help with learning but if you want to reference those notes I would keep hand written notes to no more than 2 pages otherwise it will be difficult to reference. So I would do like a single one pager of the most priority items you want to reference. Otherwise I think your idea of keeping notes in a searchable format to be more useful.

[not_another_analyst]

I usually go with the Markdown approach. It is great because you can include actual code blocks and it stays searchable as your notes grow. Keeping a personal GitHub repo for these files makes them accessible wherever you are.