Hi Newbie!

I've been a "newbie" some months ago with a comparable history:
TurboPascal, Perl, dBase, FoxPro, MySQL...

I've started with Interbase OpenSource.
I installed it on Linux.
Then I made myself familiar with SQL, and printed out the IB language
reference.
I used the spartanic ISQL-utility, which forces the user to do
everything manually.

In my opinion, this is the best way to learn controlling a DB system.

Then I started reading the IBO-docs.
Those are not structured well.

I loaded the IBO-samples, which did not work...

So I flooded this newsgroups and got all the help one could imagine.
And after some really hard weeks, I got to a point, where I started to
understand the IBO-help-files.

From there on, the IBO online help database is a rich source of Q&A.

(However: You should be familiar with OOP, to start your own test
projects...)