I learned about relational databases just from playing with Access at one of my first (boring, nontechnical) jobs. Just the fact that the GUI gives you a valid

I learned about relational databases just from playing with Access at one of my first (boring, nontechnical) jobs. Just the fact that the GUI gives you a valid query for multi-table joins, even if it's not the one you want, is extraordinarily useful if you don't know SQL and want to poke around.