Finishing Maymester with a flourish!

          I am feeling so grateful to say that over this three-week course I have greatly developed my conception about Database Design and also I was able to apply it in a physical database for a sustainable purpose, which was our final project. In the end of this learning process, I definitely feel confident about my skills to build a Database and correctly identify  the tables, attributes, relationships and all the other tools that Microsoft Access provides to develop a database. 

            As I am an Architecture major student I plan to open my own business in a near future. For this reason, I believe that this class largely contributed to my professional career. With all the knowledge that I absorbed from this semester I will be able to design my own company's database. In addition, now I can and communicate with professionals from the IT (information technology) area and better understand their language whenever I need some assistance with database systems.   

            The learning materials for this class we are excellent sources for complement my learning. I wonder if there are more online courses available in others different areas offered by Stanford University, because the videos gave us clear explanations and examples which made me even more interested about learning more from them, so I thought maybe they have some video classes in the Architecture field. 

             

What did I absorb from this class up on now?

          

        Before I start studying Database Design I did not realize that actually I already had contact with database every day. In the first days of class, I was impressed with the importance that database has on our daily life, especially because it can help how to better organize data for a sustainable project for example. In the last 10 meetings I acquired a lot of knowledge, which makes me feel really good about our class. Even though sometimes I get confused with some exercises, I understand that this class is a differential for my professional career. The most important concepts that I learned was the difference between an actual database and a dataset. I could see the reason why Excel can not be so efficient as Access to manipulate data. In Excel there is no way to establish relationships between tables (entities), and because of this, it is necessary to repeat the data in many places. In addition, we spend much more time to update information and we are vulnerable to make mistakes. It leads to anomalies and a very inconsistent dataset.

           The second concept that I learned is that there is a Logical Design and a Physical Design. In the Logical Design we built a model, where it is possible to have many-to-many relationships. But, when we translate to the database (physical) there is no longer the possibility of a many-to-many relationship exist. So, we have to break in two one-to-many relationships. 

           Another perception that I had, is that there are different languages for modeling a database. The most populars are the ER Diagram and UML Diagram. During the classes we worked with both languages, so I could understand the vocabulary used in those models. This is a very good perspective that the students can have of models. 

       All these approaches have a very important meaning for me, because now I am able to understand how to develop a good database, eliminating anomalies. Even though I am not a Business major person, I plan to open my own business in the future, so this class provides me tools to better manage my future company's database.