[TYPO3] Newbie EXT develop learning

[Rocky]

Hey,

I've been using TYPO3 for nearlly 1 and half years now. It is really an 
amazon system. I'm planing to develop some EXTs such as customer portal, 
amzon front store etc. The problem is I only use PHP developed few 
simple applications. I've gone through "Inside TYPO3", "Coding 
guideline" "TYPO3 core API" etc,. I found all of these docs are too big 
for me to get started. I'm wondering is there a place I can find some 
small pieces of basic coding examples such as mysql query etc.?

Thanks a lot in advance!
Rocky