RissRoss

SQL Questions

I've been going thoroughly going through Chapters 3 & 4 of the SQL book; however, I am still having problems with some of the exercise questions, esp. after Chapter 4. I find the most difficult exercises to be the ones where multiple subqueries are necessary. Has any grasped a handle on writing out these types of queries in SQL? If so, and you have suggestions on how to go about the exercises, it would be great to hear the advice. The IN and EXISTS commands also confuse me somewhat. In particular, I am having trouble with Chapter 4 exercises #7 - #18. In addition, I was wondering what Full Outer Join does Vs. Inner Join.

Working the Course Website

Bud - I went to the course website to view some of the supplemental exercises and articles. However, I found it difficult to print the extra materials from the course site bc of the scroll use on the page. I could not seem to get the documents to come up on a separate page in order to print the full length of these comments. If you could please explain to me how I can retrieve hard copies of these supplemental documents from the course website, I would appreciate it. Thank you.

Comment on "Thinking about class" | MySmartChannels

Thinking about class | MySmartChannels

I agree that actually trying out the different SQL functions on a computer will help with the learning process. The beginnning of the chapter was fine to read without a computer, but towards the end of Chapter 2 having access to Oracle would be good to truly understand and ingrain the functions into our memories. However, I thought it was a good start to read chapter 2 in preparation for our computer use. On that note, I have a few questions concerning the SQL reading ...

I was reading the supplemental information to SQL chapter 2 on the course's website, and was unclear where to find the document mentioned titled "Defining a Database's Tables & Fields." This is the article mentioned in comment #2 for pg. 22. Furthermore, I was hoping someone could clarify entity types for me when discussing relational databases. I know that in class Bud said that the name is often interchangeable with entities. However, the book says that each entitiy has its own table and the attributes of the entity become the columns in the table. It does not mention entity types. Therefore, I was wondering if the column names are what we refer to as entity types and then the attributes are the values filled in under these column and row titles?

Response to SugarDaddy: Mozilla v IE

SugarDaddy | MySmartChannels

Neil - in response to your question asking about the advantages of Mozilla over IE, i looked at some websites online comparing the two. It seems that the two big attractions to Mozilla are 1) greater security - lately IE has had a series of highly publicized security vulnerabilities; 2) "tab browsing" - can open a blank browser screen without opening a whole other window-less cluttering of your computer screen. With the "tab browser" feature, you can open any # of web pages and tab between them and you don't have to open a new window for each page.

Firefox is Mozilla's released browser-only product. It is an open source software, so you can download it for free. Another plus of the software is that it is less integrated with the comptuer's operating system than IE is; therefore, "if the browser gets completely hijacked and obliterated, the program is not going to completely destory everything on the disk."

It seems, according to the articles I browsed, that IE still has many features that are advantageous and functions better in lots of respects relative to Mozilla's Firefox browser; however, the big problem is that IE has recently had a lot of security issues. Even gov't security has advised users against IE.

Some good websites to look at for more info are: Mozilla vs IE; Hot tip in Microsoft Mag: Drop the Lost Explorer; and Mozilla is Good, but IE Not Bad

After researching the advantages and disadvantages, you can try Firefox for free by going to Firefox Download.

MYSQL

After reading the article distributed in class last Thursday titled AP Digital: Containing the Content I decided to look up more information about MYSQL so that I could better define and understand it for myself. For those of you who are interested, I found a website - MSQL definitions - that gives you various definitions for MYSQL. I think that the third one down from the top is best stated for our class needs. After reading the articles distributed in class and looking at a number of websites that mention MSQL, I think that MSQL can best be described as an "open source relational database management system that relies on SQL (Standard Query Language) for processing the data in the database." As we have learned from our class, a relational database management system stores data in separate tables rather than storing all the data in one main area, which is extremely beneficial for data that needs to be updated constantly. From the sites I browsed, I have gathered that MSQL is the most popular open source RDBMS around now. Reasons for this were mentioned in the article given in class, but I found many other sites supporting the benefits listed in the article. You can check out the website database journal, which lists some of the advantages of the database management system if you look under the subtitle "Why Shifting to Use Open Source Software." From my readings, I have gathered MSQL to be a great management system to use because it is free, very fast, and stable. Also, there is no need for a full-time administrator, which saves more money, because the MYSQL software handles the day-to-day maintenance automatically.

In reading through the articles and websites, however, I was a little confused when it talked about MSQL having an open source license and how that allows for "project balancing" and streamlining. Particularly the paragraph that says "These can be handled by additional MySQL databases hosted on additional hardware, such that the load on the databases is spread, or balanced, across several physical servers. This would substantially cost more with a commercial RDBMS." If anyone could better clarify this for me, that would be great.