Relational Databases and SQL Programming, with Lab

Catalog description

This is an introduction to elementary database concepts and SQL (Structure Query Language), the standard language for communicating with most database systems. This is a pragmatic course with an emphasis on skills acquisition; students will learn how to get things done quickly and easily in a database environment. This course teaches students the principles underlying the use of SQL to retrieve and manipulate data from large databases. Students learn fundamental principles that can be applied to any database environment that supports SQL, but the PERL API for MY-SQL is the software planned for instruction here. Students are given a conceptual overview of the mathematics underlying relational databases and the UML (Univeral Modeling Language) framework for database design, as well as a practical introduciton to database systems, and the ways SQL retrieves and organizes information from them. For large, pre-existing databases without customized interfaces (including many under development by biologists here at Hunter), SQL is either the standard access language or a more flexible and incisive alternative. The primary objective is to enable student