Week 1 Learning Journal CST 363

Relational database tables and spreadsheets look similar with both having rows and columns.  What are some important differences between the two?

A database is structured and enforces rules, while a spreadsheet lets me put almost anything anywhere. Databases can link tables and handle many people editing safely at the same time. They’re also better for large data, with real security and backups, whereas spreadsheets can get messy and break.

Installing and configuration a database and learning how to use it is more complicated that just reading and writing data to a file.  What are some important reasons that makes a database a useful investment of time? 

It keeps my data accurate and saves changes safely even if something goes wrong. I can ask complex questions with simple queries instead of fighting with formulas. It also supports multiple users and backups so a project can grow without chaos.

What do you want to learn in this course that you think will be useful in your future career? 

I want to learn how to design good tables and relationships for real problems. I want to get comfortable writing SQL to join data, filter it, and summarize it. I also want to know the basics of making queries faster and how to connect a database to apps I build.


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