Avoca delivered a three day NHS SQL Foundation course to Bassetlaw and Nottinghamshire Primary Care Trust. The NHS SQL Foundation course has been specifically designed to help meet the needs of those working with NHS data and benefits those who would describe themselves as SQL novices. This course aims to provide a broad and solid understanding of SQL based data analysis. The three day course covers the contents of the Starter, Information Analyst and Data Quality Courses;

• Day One: Introduction into RDMS and SQL Server 2008, understanding the basics. Navigating and returning data from databases, what the Client Server Model is and how it works, creating tables, basic Structured Query Language and how to check the returned results.

•  

Day Two: Learn how to Join tables and modify data. Entity Modelling, joining tables and manipulating data.

Day Three: Analysis and management, providing data quality. Transforming raw data into useful information and SQL Management; creating views, stored procedures and scheduling jobs.

Delegates were impressed by the good pace of teaching and the benefits of having our SQL Experts on-hand to answer questions whilst the practical workshops were being undertaken. Similarly, the competence of our SQL trainer was universally rated as very good, as was the course content. Throughout the course the workshops offer the perfect opportunity to put into practice the theoretical knowledge that has been learnt, ‘I find I learn through doing, so after good tuition it is good to put into practice’. The workshops have been designed around actual NHS scenarios by using dummy NHS data which Avoca has created based on knowledge from previous NHS clients. Delegates were particularly impressed with the course consisting of a great ‘balance of theory and practice’. Even though the course has been completed our SQL experts are still on-hand, at no extra charge, to offer assistance and advice over the phone to the delegates if they come across any SQL difficulties when back in the workplace.