Well, I already posted what all happened on Thursday night, which was really fun… So now, lets talk about the competitions:
Carl and I entered into 2 competitions: Database Design and Application Development.
Database Design:
This competition was HARD, but I must admit that it would have been a lot less hard had we ACTUALLY studied and practiced for it. The problem statement was relatively simple, and designing the structure of the database was really easy. The Entity Relationship Diagram took no time, and for those who don’t know what that is, it is just the diagram of the tables within a database and their contents and relationships to one another. After we got that finished, we had to adjust an SQL script to allow for a few more tables and some changes to the database schema. Then came the queries, and those were fucking HARD!!! I am proud of what we accomplished, and we completed about 80% of the problem statement. We did not place in this event. 
Application Development:
This competition was a LOT harder than either Carl or myself expected. It was necessary to build not just one application, but THREE!!! There was a window’s app, a console app, and a web app. Carl took on the windows app and I tackled the web app. The most time-consuming part of what I had to do was fix AITP’s database for this program. It was absolute crap!!! There was NOTHING that I could use in it, so over an hour of the competition was designing a new DB. After I got that completed, I began the site, which to be honest looks like total crap, but it really didn’t matter. Carl was busy plugging away at his part and then about 4 hours into that competition, we left. We were certain that we would not receive any recognition from our work and it was too late to do anything better so we left. But, very much to our surprise, we actually placed 4th in the competition, out of a total of 67 teams. We were SO taken aback!!! I am extremely proud of that, and wish we hadn’t left early. If we had, then I wonder what we would have been able to accomplish. I am just happy that I now get to add the following line to my resume: “Award Winning Programmer” 
Beyond the competitions and the outings, it was just cool to hang out with Carl and Lissa and the rest of the AITP gang. I had a really great trip and I know that the rest of the peeps did as well. I am looking forward to get home, though… and I am looking forward even more to starting at Deloitte.
-=brett=-
