Intro Database class week 1!

Hello internet,

This week's in-school learning was really about pre-loading students with all of the important vocabulary necessary for us to discuss databases. There were different key types, integrity between tables, and lots of examples of how you can go terribly wrong by knowing "just enough to be dangerous" with databases. I think the most important aspect of this was that just because you know how to use some database management software that doesn't mean you know what you're doing. Worse yet, if you actually convinced people you knew what you were doing you could create a massive time suck that becomes difficult to maintain. Hopefully though students don't head off on their own immediately and convince someone they can run a database.

From the homework we saw the importance of unique keys to identify rows within a table, and how to neatly link tables together with those keys. Things like SKU's on items in a store, student ID numbers, store codes, and all the other random numbers that don't seem to really give any info become magic numbers inside the database. This of course depends on being smart about how you set up your tables and which information you put inside of them. For example you probably don't want to list names unnecessarily when you can refer to people by number. Although they might feel a bit alienated during conversation, this actually ensures that you can update their name in only one location and have it updated correctly in all tables, without creating redundant names that have different spelling.

So overall I think it makes sense to continue this course and learn how to make useful databases instead of just trying to convince people I know a few key words related to database development. After all, it doesn't really matter what people think you know unless you're a shifty salesman. If you want to be part of an agile team that can manipulate matter and information to develop devices and harvest information to generate knowledge then you have to be able to do things.

Also I have some kind of fever & cold this week which makes me feel a bit dumb. It's always interesting being sick and seeing how it affects your head.

Have a good week.