SQL Server Express Edition Learning Resources
Video Series: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition for Beginners
This video series is designed specifically for SQL Server beginners—individuals who are interested in learning the basics of how to create, manage, and connect to SQL Server Express databases. Whether you’re just a beginner or somewhat familiar with databases, these video lessons will help you get better acquainted with SQL Server 2005 Express.
The series includes almost 9 hours of video-based instruction that walks SQL Server beginners through the steps of learning about SQL Server databases to actually connecting a SQL Server database to a Web application. Select your starting point below based on your skill set.
Introduction
Designing Tables
Database Functions
Creating and Using Reports
Database Security
Database Management
Publishing to the Web
Lesson 1: What is a database?
This introduction covers the questions and terminology SQL Server beginners need to create and manage databases, such as: What is a SQL Server database? How is a SQL Server database different from an Excel spreadsheet? What do SQL Server databases do in my Web site or software applications? What's SQL Server Express' relation to Visual Studio Express? What do terms like "ADO.NET" mean?
Duration: 28 minutes 15 seconds
Lesson 2: Understanding Database Tables and Records
SQL Server beginners will learn about tables and definitions of data types, properties, keys, etc. in this second video. Find out how table rows, columns, and fields interrelate and whether columns can be empty.
Duration: 24 minutes 56 seconds
Lesson 3: More about Column Data Types and Other Properties
SQL Server beginners will explore data integrity, learn which data types to use for what, and avoid common data type pitfalls.
Duration: 21 minutes 37 seconds
Lesson 4: Designing Relational Database Tables
Why are relational databases the most popular? SQL Server beginners will learn to differentiate between primary and foreign keys, design relational database tables, and learn about normalization rules and de-normalization.
Duration: 34 minutes 10 seconds
Lesson 5: Manipulating Database Data
SQL Server beginners will learn about ADO.NET objects and execution of SQL statement from ADO.NET. Explore SQL and learn about insert, update, and delete statements.
Duration: 40 minutes 20 seconds
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Note: This lesson requires Management Studio Express and MSXML.
Lesson 6: More Structured Query Language
SQL Server beginners will discover more SQL statements like sub-select and learn stored procedures and their counterparts in C# and VB methods.
Duration: 23 minutes 13 seconds
Lesson 7: Understanding Security and Network Connectivity
SQL Server beginners will learn to differentiate between SQL Server database files and SQL Server processes. Explore scenarios for connecting to SQL Server Express databases, enabling and disabling user instances, login permissions, and other security precautions.
Duration: 40 minutes 59 seconds
Lesson 8: Connecting your Web Application to SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
SQL Server beginners will walk through the entire workflow of creating a database driven Web application and use visual tools to quickly create an administration application.
Duration: 65 minutes 58 seconds
Lesson 9: Using SQL Server Management Studio
SQL Server Management Studio Express will typically be your main interface into SQL Server Express. This lesson demonstrates the essential techniques and skills you’ll need to successfully connect to database instances, navigate the query window and scripting database objects, attaching, detaching and backing up databases, and much more.
Duration: 40 minutes 26 seconds
Lesson 10: Getting Started with Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services allows you to design and deploy nicely formatted and interactive reports representative of your data. Suitable for print or online distribution, these reports … and it allows you to get professional results very quickly. This video demonstrates how to set up Reporting Services and the Business Intelligence Development Studio to build reports using the wizards and designers, and deploy them to your Report Server.
Duration: 32 minutes 51 seconds
Lesson 11: Building and Customizing Reports in Business Intelligence Development Studio
Building on the previous lesson, we dive into building reports from scratch and modifying the reports that were created using the wizards and designers. We also demonstrate how to embed your reports into your ASP.NET Web Form applications.
Duration: 44 minutes 50 seconds
Lesson 12: Creating and Using Stored Procedures
This video expands on the topic of Stored Procedures which was introduced several lessons ago. In this video we explain the basic syntax to create and update stored procedures, using input and output parameters, return values, declaring variables and adding other T-SQL programming elements into you stored procedures, how to execute your stored procedures from the query window, and finally the Visual Basic and C# syntax required to utilize stored procedures in your own applications.
Duration: 42 minutes 34 seconds
Lesson 13: Enabling Full-Text Search in your Text Data
Full-Text search allows you to save large portions of text even Microsoft Word documents, or other file formats into your database and perform complex queries based on this textual data while expecting great performance. This lesson demonstrates how to set up Full-Text search paying particular attention to the nuances of setting it up within SQL Server Express. Then we move to creating full-text indexes, configuring the index population settings, and performing queries that demonstrate the power of the CONTAINS predicate and its many, many variations.
Duration: 38 minutes 25 seconds
