title: How shall I get more SQL Server and T-SQL Experience
body: <p>I'm a developer with over 10 years experience in vb5/6, C#, VB.NET, 3 years of WCF too, design and architecture. I consider myself to be pretty good and can usually solve anything given time (like most good developers). I worked for a company for 8 years and during that time used a database called IBM UniVerse, it's an old Pick style database (multivalue), but it's ok. My trouble is, I've used a multivalue database for such a long time of my career I haven't got a lot of major advanced skills in SQL Server. I know enough about ANSI SQL to get by, but usually consult the net for syntax here and there, whilst in the 8 year job we automated SQL commands so I didn't even write SQL for at least a few years. Now I've left and I'm looking for another job and most of them say not only do you need to be an absolute expert at C#/VB.NET (which is fine) but you also need to be an expert at SQL Server and have the ability to write complex stored procs in T-SQL and performance tune. Now, I could probably get by just fine and learn as I go as I generally do anyway, but when it comes to write T-SQL on a stupid piece of paper in front of 4 people in an interview I don't do too well. I do like SQL Server as it has a management GUI unlike IBM UniVerse with it's DOS like command prompt! So using the management studio is fairly easy, setting indexes, creating tables, creating relationships etc.</p>
  
  <p>So my question is, how to I go about getting up to speed very quickly in all things SQL Server? Most jobs now seems to be "Software Developer / DBA". In my opinion they are separate jobs, but oh well, can't do anything about that.</p>