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How this site works, and where to begin.

How the site is laid out

Every system has its own course, and every course sits in a category. The address says both: it.akadian.ca/databases/sql/ is the SQL course in the Databases category. The Books tab lists the categories; open one to see its courses, and open a course to see its chapters.

Category What goes there
Databases The SQL language, and each database system (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, MongoDB, Redis ...)
Data engineering Moving and shaping data at scale: Databricks and the medallion model, Spark, Airflow, dbt, Kafka
Data warehouses and BI Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Power BI, Tableau
Programming Python, Java, JavaScript, Bash. SQL lives under Databases and is linked from here
Cloud AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
DevOps Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, CI/CD
Servers and operating systems Linux, Windows Server, virtual machines
Enterprise applications ERP, CRM and IT service management systems
Identity and security Directories, single sign-on, access control (network security is on networks.akadian.ca)
Monitoring and operations Logs, metrics, alerts, incidents
AI and machine learning Models, pipelines and the platforms that run them
Interview prep Practice for coding tests such as Codility

A category appears in the menu once its first course is written.

How a course works

  • Chapters in order. Each chapter needs only the ones before it, and opens with a box saying what it covers and what you need first.
  • Real results. Every example is run on a real system, and the result shown under it is what the system really printed. The line above each result says where it was run.
  • Practice with hidden answers. Each chapter ends with questions. The answer and the explanation are folded underneath: try first, then open.
  • Interview tips name the usual wrong answer and show it failing.

Where to begin