Business Pros and SQL Programming

[kyleboerner]

I'm a Marketing professional and have been using COGNOS for the last two months.  It didn't take long to realize that, as a Business professional with Business training, that SQL Programming was not going to come easy for when written expressions are required to create Data Items, etc.

My question is to other Business/Marketing Professionals out there using COGNOS; especially the seasoned veterans:
If you don't forward all SQL Programming requests (esp writing expressions) to your IT/Programming department, and instead write the expressions yourself, how long and how much training did you require to become confident in writing expressions in COGNOS???  ALSO, where did you receive the training???

Thanks,
Kyle