Journal 15

 April 29 - May 6

A new class has begun! To be completely honest, I was dreading taking this class based upon the course description as I thought it was going to be quite boring (I thought it would be similar to a previous course I had taken at my community college). After completing the week 1 reading, labs, and homework, I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoy this course. Creating the SQL code reminds me a lot of my Discrete Mathematics course, and I truly enjoyed taking that class. I feel as though the SQL code is somewhat akin to solving little puzzles, and it is quite fun. I will be looking forward to an interesting and informative class!

To answer the questions for the journal:

1. Relational database tables and spreadsheets look similar with both having rows and columns. What are some important differences between the two?
   Databases, in comparison with spreadsheets, can be designed to contain millions of rows of data with various indexing and optimization, while spreadsheets often can only handle a fraction of that scale and will degrade rapidly in performance when complex formulas or datasets are introduced. Also, authorization and security can vary greatly between the two. Relational database tables have access control, roles, and audit logs. Spreadsheets can grant certain users permission to access, but once access is granted, they are able to edit pretty much anything, and there are very limited audit trails. Spreadsheets are great for small scale reporting and analysis, but big data (large-scale, multi-user, etc.) is better handled by relational database tables for performance and integrity purposes.
   
   
2. Installation and configuration of a database and learning how to use it is more complicated than just reading and writing data to a file. What are some important reasons that makes a database a useful investment of time? 
   As mentioned in the previous question, performance and scalability of a database makes it a very useful investment of time. Indexing and searching such large collections of data can be done quite simply, and there is great recoverability should a computer, database system, or individual transaction fail. Also, there is an added benefit of security and log auditing, which are both excellent benefits of learning how to use a database. 
   
   
3. What do you want to learn in this course that you think will be useful in your future career? 
   I hope to go into the field of data analytics/ data science, so I hope to learn about data-management practices such as access, extraction, optimization, and data modeling. I believe mastery of database systems and associated practices will allow me to seamlessly extract data in order to derive actionable insights from large data sets. I think this course will be very important for (hopeful) my future line of work.