Database course discussion 2 | Computer Science homework help

Please see below the discussion in response to the original question asked and respond as a peer using 150 or more words.

Original Question:   As your study in this course draws to a close, it is important to reflect on new levels of understanding, skills, and knowledge that you developed as a result of your efforts throughout this course. It is particularly important to reflect on the course outcomes (what you were intended to learn in this course). 

Peer Response:  

When I enrolled in this course I expected to learn about the different components to a database and how I might need to structure it. We covered the database concepts, design, modeling, normalization, and statements. Each module we were able to build on what we learned. This class taught me that a database is a collection of structured information that is accessed, managed, updated, and controlled with a query language(SQL).

I learned that an Entity Relationship Diagram is to show the relationship of entities stored in a database. There are three concepts to an ER Diagram: entities, attributes, and relationships. This step is before creating your ER model which is a must before implementing your database. We do this to eliminate redundant information and make sure that all needed information is supported. I must admit that this concept seems simple but for me I had a hard breaking everything down to eliminate the repeated information. This is still a slight struggle but with a little more practice I can get it. 

Normalization is a technique used to reduce redundancy and reduce the need for insertion, updates, and deletion. There are 3 forms that we covered in this course. 1NF, 2NF, 3NF and each one will build on top of one another. 1NF should have one value and it needs to be unique. 2NF must be in 1NF and the primary key is not functionally dependent on any other key relations. 3NF must be in 2NF and no transitive functional dependencies. This was the biggest struggle I had in the entire course. I had to find visual examples to really get my understanding around this course material. 

SQL Statements was my favorite part of the whole course. The statements we used were basic and straight forward. Statements had keywords like SELECT, FROM, CREATE TABLE, INSERT INTO. The commands told you exactly what you were doing. I think I enjoyed this section so much because I was able to get the visual satisfaction of my data inputs populating in the tables. I have had experience with SQL before but to only pull information that I was looking for, so to actually write it was fun.

Thank you Dr. Kats, your classes challenge me and your feedback is very helpful. I hope to have you in another course!