Databases, week two

Let me first say, I like SQL. I've struggled to learn certain aspects of it, but so far, I'm enjoying learning it and probably find creating databases the most fun thing we've done in class. That said there is still plenty I need to work on.

Setting up tables and attributes using Webmin and phpMyAdmin was easy thanks to the GUI. I remain an advocate for GUI's whenever possible, and this unit served to reinforce my prejudice. The bulk of my comments, therefore, will be reserved for MySQL monitor.

As usual, the UACBT tutorials were quite helpful and easy to follow, and I found the print version from W3Schools to be useful for the dropbox assignment. Following along with the tutorials is not hard; likewise, the assignment instructions were easy to follow. The difficulty lies in translating the lessons into self-created syntax. As I started to work on the dropbox assignment, I found it difficult to construct the proper syntax from memory despite having seen it only moments before. This is, of course, like everything in life. It's easy to read a good book; much harder to write one. Fortunately, it did become easier as I proceeded through the assignment, a trend I expect will continue with practice.

Multiple table queries, in particular, remain taxing to construct correctly. And I still have only a tenuous grasp of inner, left, and right join. I understand roughly what they do, but it's still a bit fuzzy. Nonetheless, this part of the course seems very translatable to what I might do in the future, and I look forward to the possibility of creating databases for real-world applications.