Strange Symphonies The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

eGenting Competition 2006: Workshops

So it's suggested that I attend these "workshops" to build up my skills and expections before attending the competition. Frankly these workshops are boring.

The workshops covered:

• Embedded SQL
• Data Flow Diagrams (AHH THE HORROR!)

Embedded SQL is new to me, and I don't exactly know the benefits vs normal SQL queries. As for the lesson on DFDs, horror! I hate DFDs, and anything related to Systems Analysis and Design...it's just so boring...

On an interesting note they defined one table as:

<br />
create table activity {<br />
    ...<br />
    actDate    integer not null,<br />
    ...<br />
}<br />

Is that an integer I see for a data type which could possibly be a date?

From the workshop sheet:

Dates are stored on the database in YYYYMMDD format, but the date range submitted to the reporting program must be submitted in DDMMYY format. Two-digit years from 70-99 are in the twentieth century. Other yeras are in the twenty-first century.