| Additional Computer Skills For NT Professionals |
OK, so you got your MCSE or are working on it. It has been a tough struggle, but now you know all about global groups, DNS, network shares and a whole bunch of other neat stuff. So you are on your first job, and they say "we are installing the company database on a member server" and you say "Database? What's that?". Five minutes later you find yourself deposited on the sidewalk by Security.
Study the material on this page to avoid that fate.
HTML
You'll want to be able to make at least a basic html page from a text
editor, but after mastering the basics you may want to use a special html
editor like Netscape Composer or FrontPage (FrontPage Express is included
free with the Full Installation of MSIE, Netscape Composer comes with Netscape
Communicator).
HTML By Example
More HTML Resources:
Web Developer's Virtual Library
HTML Goodies
Web Resource
HTML Pit Stop
MSDN (not just for html - a
great general reference).
Active Web Pages
The next step after making a static web page is to make an active one,
using ASP, DHTML and/or CGI. CGI and ASP are for making pages live on the
server side, and DHTML is for making pages live on the client side. I'll
be posting some ASP and DHTML samples and resources at some point here...
As for CGI, check out this great introduction
to CGI.
Additional note on making web pages, either active or static pages: I've used Netscape Comporer, MS FrontPage, MS Visual Interdev and Macromedia Dreamweaver. Visual Interdev is a very compelling environment for making database connected web applications, but for everything else, Dreamweaver (30 day free trial version, $259 retail) is incomparably more powerful and easy to use. Microsoft is currently (3/15/98) distributing a 90 day trial version of Visual Interdev for about $10.
MS Office
All NT professionals should know how to use each application in MS
Office.
The way to get started: Get
Mastering Office 97 Visually, by MaranGraphics. With this book and a computer
with MS Office installed, in a single weekend you can learn how to use
all of the Office applications.
Database
You should know what a RDMS is and how to query a database using SQL,
at the least. You'll want to read Phil Greenspun's intro to Database
Management Systems - read his
whole book if you have time. Other
Database Links.
Unix
Knowing Unix is very helpful both to look at networking from another
perspective and because you may be working with networks of Unix and NT
machines.
You can install either Linux or Solaris 7 on an Intel-compatible machine.
Linux is free, and Solaris is free for non-commercial use.
Linux is available from Walnut Creek
or Red Hat. O'Reilly publishes a good
Linux book.
Solaris is available from Sun (about
$15 shipping and handling).
Programming
Network administrators can benefit from a little - or a lot - of familiarity
with at least one computer language.
Shell Scripting: the most basic
- administrators must at least know the basics of this. Read at least half
of NT
Shell Scripting and you'll know as much as you need to know.
Perl - the world's greatest all-purpose
scripting language. Get started by downloading
Perl and then reading Learning
Perl on Win32 Systems. The next book to read after that is
Effective Perl Programming. For a quick start/intro while you are waiting
for your Perl books to arrive, go through the lessons in CGI
Programming 101.
Python - devotees of this language
would disagree with the statement that Perl is the greatest scripting language.
Both Perl and Python are cross-platform, are free and have a ton of free add-ons,
and are easy to learn (but not necessarily so easy to master). In some ways
Python is a better language for learning programming than Perl, because it is
100% object-oriented and always readable. Perl has more a philosophy of letting
you do what you want, including use or not use objects, and write impossible-to-read
code if that is what you want to do. Perl is a lot more popular though, probably
has more modules available. Perl is in far wider use than Python. N.B.: Whatever
language you do learn, you aren't really doing modern programming until you
master the use of objects.
Visual Basic,
VBScript and VBA - Roughly speaking, Visual Basic is for developing
applications, VBScript is for writing scripts in a web page (can also be be
used from the command line) and VBA is for programming MS Office applications.
The syntax of these languages is similiar, so if you learn one, you can apply
what you have learned to the others. These are all must-learn languages for
the NT platform, because of their presence in all major MS products. The actual
syntax of these languages has a lot of limitations compared to other languages,
so you won't want to be limited to them. Very easy to learn, but sometimes not
so easy to get work done in. For beginners, I definitely recommend do not
start with Visual Basic or VBA if you really want to learn to program. It is
much better to start with Perl, Python or Java. Perl is your best bet if you
want to start using what you learn soon. If you learn one of the latter languages,
VB and VBA are very simple to pick up.
Java Perhaps the best-designed
all-purpose (from scripting to application development) language. But not
as immediately useful as the above languages, at least at the present time.
Other Stuff
If you aren't already in the field, it helps to have some work that
you can show people. Some possible projects that you could work on: