[EvanAnderson]

> Additionally learn stored procedures.

For sure, but have a solid grounding in set theory to go with it.

I've dealt with so many poorly-performing stored procedures that ended up being written as iteration over a CURSOR when they could have been done with sets. Programmers who don't grok set theory reach for iterative constructs which, while they work fine, are an impedance mismatch with SQL.

[clappski]

At least in that case you can refactor the stored proc to be more performant without pushing application changes.

[pjmlp]

Agreed, however that applies to SQL in general.

I have seen DBAs make wonders without changing queries, only by adding the right set of indexes.