Most of this week was spent doing independent research into database topics.  As Evergreen does not regularly offer database coursework, I was grateful for this opportunity.  I focused my studies on SQL concepts and ADO.NET, which is a C# framework for interacting with relational databases.  I ended up writing a small C# console program that uses ADO.NET to interface with a local database instance, performing basic tasks such as selecting/inserting/deleting rows and calling stored procedures.  This was a great exercise and really gave me a solid basic foundation for coded database interaction.  Soon, I will begin applying those concepts to writing some C# code related to gathering database performance metrics.

I also completed a number of other small projects.  I finished my research into Silverlight web testing and wrote up a document presenting my findings.  I also fixed a couple of issues with the suite of web tests I had written previously, and have begun writing an internal troubleshooting document for web performance tests.

I had a moment of excitement when the tests I wrote turned up what looked like a bug, but it turned out to be a known issue… so the search continues for my career-first bugfind.

Culture-wise, I picked up my cards for the employee Magic: the Gathering league and made my deck.  I will be playing approximately 15 games over the next five weeks against various coworkers; this will not only be fun, but be a great chance to network.