kdb+/q is an exciting programming language to work with. The performance coupled with the expressiveness of the language leads to productivity gains, production systems with lower maintenance overhead, and in general a very enjoyable programming experience. kdb+ programmers spend most of their time thinking about the problem they are trying to solve rather than unnecessary complexity introduced by some other languages.

There are several benefits:

Lower cost:

• The cost of our online training courses is significantly lower than any of the currently available public training courses in kdb+
• There is no need to hire a separate classroom space for the training
• A training coordinator’s time is not required

More effective Learning:

• Learners can proceed at their own pace and can return to a unit if they don’t understand a concept the first time around
• Learners complete self-assessment questions as they progress through the material. The quizzes allow a Learner to see where they have gone wrong and try again.
• The learning is not crammed into a 2- or 3-day window. Learning in shorter bursts can be more effective
• Learners can skip through videos covering material they are already familiar with and just answer the associated questions directly

More Flexibility:

• It is not always easy to find a quorum of attendees for a classroom training course at a time when training is required by certain users. Having to wait a month to get everyone together can cause project scheduling issues. The online training courses solve this issue
• Learning can be done at a time that suits the Learner. Learners will not be in a position where they get pulled out of the classroom to attend to a production issue and miss out on half a day of training
• Attendees for a training course are often in different geographical regions. It can be difficult to bring them all together or facilitate a course for everyone at a time that suits everyone over webex
• Learning is not dependent on the availability of the trainer and the training venue

Proof of Learning

• Data Intellect’s online training engages the learner in the completion of self-assessment questions after each tutorial video. Upon completion of the Final Quiz,  a Certificate of Completion virtual badge is awarded to those learners who attain sufficient scores.
• This certificate shows employers that their staff have truly learned from the course and not just clicked their way through the material, or attended a classroom course passively

Data Intellects’ kdb+ instructors are some of the most experienced globally in the provision of classroom training courses. We have taken that experience and partnered with online learning experts Learnbase, to produce a best-in-class online training site for kdb+.

Data Intellect continue to offer classroom-based training courses in kdb+ for clients. Please contact us for more information. Many of our clients like to have the online training site available to their users as a reinforcement tool once they have completed a classroom training course. Learners can go on to attain their Certificate of Completion through the online training site after attending the classroom training. This shows the employer that they have attained a certain level of understanding of kdb+ following on from their training. This is not something that is easy to verify after attendance at a classroom training course alone.

You can still get help. Each lesson in the course contains a “Submit Feedback” section. Questions entered here will be sent to a kdb+ expert who will respond to your question. This course tutorial assistance remains available during the 8 weeks of access to the course material.

Each of the courses has an estimate of how long it takes to go through the video content listed below. However, in order to fully absorb the information covered during the course, it is suggested that the users complete all of the examples in the documents section which can take extra time. Following along in a Q console when watching the video is highly encouraged and it will help you answer the questions. It may also be helpful to re-watch the previous videos and attempt the exercises in the documents if you get stuck on a question.

If you continue to have problems with the course content, you can use the “Submit Feedback” option in the lesson workbook to ask any questions you might have.

kdb+ Bootcamp
This course contains approximately 2-3 days of video content that covers kdb+ from the ground up and should be appropriate for everyone regardless of previous experience.  However, if you already have experience with kdb+, you may wish to complete the units more quickly! A suggested timeline for a user that has no experience of Q would be:

Week 1: Unit 1 to Unit 3
Week 2: Unit 4 to Unit 5
Week 3: Unit 6 to Unit 8

kdb+ Booster
This course contains approximately 1-2 days of video content that covers querying and analysing data from an existing kdb+ database. It is expected that you know some of the basics of kdb+ (e.g. types and basic syntax) and are ready to jump into the more complex features. A suggested timeline for a user that has little experience of querying and analysis with Q would be:

Week 1: Unit 1 to Unit 3
Week 2: Unit 4

Please contact us directly to discuss Enterprise Rates for our online training courses. We can assist you with a bulk purchase of course spaces or with an Annual Unlimited Course Access Agreement.

A course purchase gives you access to the video tutorials, self-assessment questions, email support and all additional material for a period of 8 weeks.

Some of the coding example and self-assessment tasks involve the creation of databases of different sizes, and involve different in-memory operations. Although the examples can be reduced as required to fit your available disk space and RAM, you should aim to have  4GB of RAM and 20GB of free disk space.  The examples can be run on Windows, OSX, Linux or Solaris using the free 32-bit version of kdb+.  The minimum version of Internet Explorer we support is 10.

Please see our resources and blog pages on our main website for other instructional material including kdb+ & HTML5, kdb+ interfacing to C, kdb+ & TCP etc.

Other resources of interest include:

• kxcommunity.com
• kx.com
• google groups
• code.kx.com

TorQ is a free framework that Data Intellect released to the kdb+ community recently. It forms the basis of a production kdb+ system by implementing some core functionality and utilities on top of kdb+, allowing developers to concentrate on the application business logic. We have incorporated as many best practices as possible, with particular focus on performance, process management, diagnostic information, maintainability and extensibility. TorQ incorporates a suite of processes which are required in the majority of kdb+ environments. TorQ vastly reduces the time-to-market of any kdb+ implementation. If you are considering implementing the TorQ Framework within your organization, please feel free to contact us directly to discuss further.

Data Intellect provides solutions to complex data problems in demanding environments for world-leading organisations.

Put simply – we turn big data problems into smart data solutions.

Our Services:

• Time Series Data and kdb+
• Performance-based software engineering
• Data Analytics & Engineering
• Solution Delivery