Karen just posted a blog entry on Reading [Database] Schemas in which she mentions that she would like to write a class in this specific area which I interpret as ‘Databases for Testers’. I’ve been working on one in the back of my mind for awhile; I just need to convince the school I run my QA courses through to offer it. I know there is an audience for this sort of thing as most courses regarding databases are aimed at programmers or admins who have their own topics which differ from what Testers need.

As I envision such a course, it would be 2 full days (so 16 hours) and students would have access to a sqllite database to play / practice with during the course. (The benefit is that they can take it with them and it can be easily installed onto machines thus reducing setup pain.) Here is the content:

  • Database objects
    • Tables
    • Views
    • Triggers
    • Stored Procedures
    • Cursors
    • Indexes
  • Relational Theory
    • Primary Key
    • Foreign Key
    • Normalization
  • Transactions
  • SQL
    • select
    • update
    • insert
    • delete
  • Data Quality
    • NULL
  • Security
    • Permissions
    • SQL Injection
    • Sensitive information storage
  • Performance
    • Execution Plan
  • Tool Survey