I am a freelance IT guy and have a number of small clients in my home town.
One of theses clients is about to install an SQL based application which wil
need some development work. They asked me if I could do it but knowing Squat
about SQL I suggested they find someone who knows SQL very well to do this
part of the work.

They approached my old employer and asked them it tjhey could do it and they
said they could do it. I know the people in that company and I know that
there is nobody there that knows anything about SQL, so I can only assume
they are going to outsource the job to another party.

My question has two parts.

What can I do to ensure that my customer does not get ripped off and how
long would it take for someone to get up to speed on SQL given that the app
is not required for another 3 months?

I am thinking of teaching myself SQL given that I used to cut code in Cobol
in the 60's (that dates me, and using punch cards) and early machine
assembler languages. As far as I can see SQL is query driven system which
should be too hard to learn, but I could also be way off beam.

Why give the revenue to someone else or am I being totally impractical?

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