Course Description:
This course introduces students to the role and place of databases in Information Systems (IS). The course explains the advantages of databases compared to file systems, describes the basic functionality of the Database Management Systems (DBMS)—the special software needed for running a database, and shows how a database functions with other parts of the IS.
The course concentrates on relational databases (RDB), explains the organization of data within tables in the RDB and the role of the integrity constraints: the primary and foreign keys.
The major portion of the course is concerned with Structured Query Language (SQL)—the language of creating and supporting RDBs, and manipulating the relational data. The students learn how to create tables, specify constraints, populate tables with data, and manipulate the data: create, update, delete, and retrieve the data.
Demonstrations of database concepts and practical work are performed in one of the relational DBMSs. This will include the creation of tables, manipulation of data in the tables, queries using one or more tables, and importing/exporting data to other applications.
