Russell's Learning Journal

Three most important things about CST 363 Intro to Database Systems 1. Because this is an introduction class, one of the most important things as a student was the introduction to all of the terminology involved in database planning, implementing, and maintaining.  Anyone looking for a future career in data would know precisely what to study more after this class. 2. This should go without saying but, being introduced to the SQL language is also a significant part of this class.  Even though it is just a start, learning the syntax of SQL teaches enough to continue to practice and become proficient. 3. The final most important thing about this course was the quality of the assignments.  The assignments made it easy to be introduced to new topics because they all used real-world examples such as the Zagimor database schema relating to a retail store or the hafhmore database schema relating to rental management systems.  Being able to work with data that is easy to unde...

 Data warehouse In an organization, the data created, deleted, and queried is stored in an operational database.  This operational database is used frequently and is constantly changing.  That same organization will also possess a data warehouse that contains similar data but is entirely separate from the operational database.  This data warehouse is used for business analytical purposes such as tracking trends or customer behaviors.  It is important to store this similar data in a data warehouse because the data warehouse is only designed to be read-only.  This means the data in the data warehouse accumulates over time and cannot be edited.  Because of these two features, the data warehouse stores some of the most useful information for businesses.

 MongoDB vs MySQL Both of these database management systems efficiently and effectively allow the user, whether its front-end or back-end, to insert, delete, and select data.  Both also specialize in how those steps are done.   MySQL uses the SQL language to select data from a relational database.  The data in the database is broken up into related tables through the use of primary and foreign keys.  MySQL also works best for data with a uniform structure because if the structure has to change then an entirely new schema will need to be constructed to allow for those changes. MongoDB on the other hand is referred to as a NoSQL database management system.  Much like a table in MySQL MongoDB has collections where documents can be inserted.  This data does not have to be uniform by nature and can be created and populated at the same time.  This allows the schema of that data to be very different from document to document.  This type of data...

 An index on a database is supposed to speed up the process of a query.  There are instances where using an index can do the opposite of this intended feature.  An index is performed in three steps.  The tree traversal, following the leaf node chain, and retrieving the data in the table.  If blocks (the leaf nodes and the table data) are made too big then every time the index is performed, it will have to research through the entire block making the query take much longer to find the same information.