A2b–Database–Grading Comments

Overall Comment

This assignment went quite well overall, with most of you understanding and appreciating the purpose.  Below I’ve addressed several issues that came up repeatedly

Planning

• Many of you realized the value of what Dr. Song emphasized, the importance of planning your database design in advance.  It’s just like a building – adding an elevator after the fact is MUCH harder than in the design stage.

Using Record ID Fields

• In my comments I referred a number of you to a post I thought I’d made (but now cannot find) about common problems with the first database assignment.  This had to do with the frustration that Access automatically assigns a number to a field that is identified as a “primary key”.  Using a primary key value for a particular record can thus be a problem if you delete it and think you’re recreating it – there’s a new primary key number which is NOT what you had before.  The trick is to not delete and recreate the same record OR do not use primary keys in “drop downs”, but instead use a descriptive field.

How To Enter Records Without Having to Look Up their key field.

• Access provides a method, one of number of “controls”, to produce a dropdown box in a form.  You can then see the value of a descriptive field in the dropdown menu, but Access actually puts the value of its primary key in the field.
• One or two of you experimented with this successfully.

Other Databases

• As I’d hoped, a number of you claimed to be quite interested in using Access further.  You should be aware that “serious” database people tend to sneer at Access (unjustly I’d say).  The fundamental problem is that large databases need to be used by many people simultaneously.  Access is not good at this.  If that’s what you need then you’re into the world of either a web-based database (probably PHP and SQL)  or a commercial product like those from Oracle.  These get more complex than Access quite quickly.
• Several saving graces are:
• the principles you’ve learned using Access still apply
• The SQL language that underlies Access is used throughout the relational database world.
• You can actually connect to large SQL databases using Access.

Week-7 Class Structure

• Part-1 – Talk by Dr. Song on Relational Databases

• Part-2 – Databases – Some More Practical Material

CAT-061–Meeting Place on Tuesday 2/19 for Dr. Song’s Talk

As I announced in class, we’ll be meeting this week in a regular lecture hall, CAT-061, for our guest lecture by Dr. Il-Yeol Song.

Here’s a brief excerpt from Dr. Song’s biography.

Il-Yeol Song is a professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. He is also an affiliated professor of Computer Science Division of KAIST, Korea . He has been on the faculty since 1988, achieving Full Professor rank in 2000. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Louisiana State University in 1984 and 1988, respectively. His research focuses on the practical application of modeling & design theory to real-world problems.

His current research areas include conceptual modeling, design & performance optimization of data warehouses, OLAP, CRM, object-oriented analysis & design with UML, modeling & integration of medical & bioinformatic database, and digital forensics. He has won four teaching awards from Drexel University: Exemplary Teaching Awardin 1992, Senior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award in 2000, the 2001 Christian R. and Mary Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award in 2001, and Outstanding Instructor Award in 2011.

Database Assignment–Document Requirement

Question:

“I was confused by the grading rubric.

For the first week it says to submit a document along with the database but on the assignment page it just says to turn in a document for week 8.

Do you want a document for both weeks or just week 8?”

 

Response:

Thanks for catching the error.  Only one document with the Week-8 assignment is required.

Databases–Relational vs. “NoSQL”

In a couple of weeks we’ll be looking at relational databases using the SQL language as the method of interacting with the database, pretty much the standard for small to big business at the moment.  In the last few years several very big internet companies have developed NoSQL alternatives that are faster with monster amounts of data.  This article, an interview with a partisan, gives you some idea of the issues. 

Note that MySQL was purchased by Oracle so the MariaDB mentioned is an effort to keep an opensource large-scale relational database available.

“Big Data may be the poster child for NoSQL databases and date warehouses, but one industry veteran isn't giving up on SQL databases for Big Data just yet.

As most IT watchers know, Big Data is perceived as so large that it's difficult to process using relational databases and software techniques. Of course, the relational model and SQL dominate today's database landscape. But on the other side there are databases built without relations, made for higher scalability. We asked the expert in the database area, Monty Widenius, about the current and future state of SQL, NoSQL and Big Data. As the author of the original version of the open-source MySQL database, and one of the founders of the community-developed branch of the MySQL database, MariaDB, his take on Big Data bucks the conventional wisdom that large-scale data must abandon SQL databases.”