Module 8 - CST 363

Overall, I really enjoyed this course. Going into it I was not entirely sure how I felt about SQL and databases from my brief exposure in our prior course. However, this course was really quite fun and very informative. Our professor and TA were both helpful and clear, the textbook was easy to read and understand, and the assignments were straightforward and interesting. I feel fairly confident in my SQL skills now and see how they it can be used as a very useful tool. I look forward to my next course beginning soon, and am glad that I was able to take part in this one. Thanks again.

Module 7 - CST 363

This week was mainly spent working on our final project. My teammate did a great job on the ER diagram and establishing the model we would be using. I had fun coming up with queries to use that utilized subselects and joins in their statements. It was interesting to cover some new topics as well including BI, OLAP, and the NoSQL movement. Later this week I will take my final and that will finish up the course. I feel like I've learned quite a bit in these few weeks and honestly really enjoyed the course work, as well as all the effort the TA and Professor put into the course.

Module 6 - CST 363

This week we received our instructions for the final group project of the course. It looks like it will be an interesting exercise to complete with my teammate. This week I we covered some interesting topics such as security, users, permissions and creating functions. It was quite interesting to see the various levels of permissions that were available and how granting and revoking worked on various users. It was also useful to learn about groups and how they can be used to create a general template for permission granting.

Module 5 - CST 363

This week covered some interesting topics including concurrency, isolation transaction levels, and normalization. Some of the exercises utilizing mySQL workbench to simulate two users modifying a database at the same time were quite interesting, and it was interesting to see the differing ways the database had of handling transactions depending on the isolation level that was used. It was also interesting learning about normalization and its uses, and also when denormalization may actually be beneficial to a database manager. Overall it was a very interesting and engaging week.

Module 4 - CST 363

This week we had our first exam. It was quite interesting and I enjoyed going through the exercises and reading the articles inside. We also worked with MySQL workbench to create diagrams for our JRJ database. This was quite an interesting exercise as it showcased some of the issues that can arise when designing a database. Overall, it was an interesting week and I look forward to the next assignments.

Module 3 - CST 363

This week we began our foray into html and php programming and utilizing it to make SQL queries to our databases. Our previous courses really helped this week as I could make use of the practice gained when learning html and php in our internet programming coursework. It was interesting also to read up on various data structures and create examples for the questions in assignment 7. I look forward to the coming week.

Module 2 - CST 363

This week we continued our exploration into SQL. It was quite interesting covering some of the more advanced statements such as JOIN and COUNT. I had quite a bit of fun learning about inner versus outer joins and their applications. The assignments were interesting and the results which you receive from an odd query can be quite humorous. I look forward to beginning on next weeks assignments soon.