Assignment Question: List the pros and cons about the ways the discussed databases have been used. Your responses should show that you’ve thought about your classmates’ initial posts. Your responses should continue the conversation, offer new ideas, and ask questions if something doesn’t make sense, if necessary.

Peer Post # 1

Hello everyone, my name is Karina. I’m studying for a BS in computer science with a concentration in software engineering. I’m from Puerto Rico, and have also lived in New York and Miami. I’ve been teaching English in Japan for the last 9 years, but I want to start a career as a software or web developer. I hope this course will help me to learn about databases and how to design and implement them effectively so I can create great software or websites. Many years ago, I used to work at a library and often used a database to look for patrons, lend books out to them, see what books they were currently borrowing, what books they ordered or had on hold, if they had any overdue books. Of course, I also used the database of books themselves to look for books by author, title, genre, etc., and their location in the library or if they were in other library branches. It made our job easier, since we could find the information we needed quickly with the scan of a barcode or typing in the search box. More recently, I’d been studying web development and created a website with a database using MongoDB. The idea was that users could curate a list of their favorite restaurants (including information like address, kind of food, any extra comments), then the website would randomly suggest a restaurant from that database when users were hungry but couldn’t decide on a place to eat. To make a diagram of a database, we need to know what kind of information will be stored in the database, how it is broken up and (if it’s a relational database) the relationships and connections between them. We must also think about who will be using the database and why.

Peer Post # 2

My name is Dante, and I am super excited to start learning about databases and how to navigate them. I am currently pursuing my bachelor’s degree in cyber security in hopes of becoming a penetrator tester someday. I am from Colorado Springs, Colorado, and live with my beautiful wife and our 4 kids. I chose the cyber security field because I have always had an interest in computers and how they work and thought how cool it would be to understand the security part of it. I am not entirely sure if this would be considered as using a database, however, the computer that I am currently using to attend school at one time would not boot up past the manufacturer screen because I had uploaded driver updates to my graphics card that wasn’t designed for mine specifically. When I did get lucky enough to get to my desktop it would immediately crash. I had spent countless hours attempting to wipe the computer clean and start fresh and nothing would work. So eventually I came across instructions online that required me to use the command prompt and enter in queries very similar to the ones I have read about in chapter one. They had to be identical and were case sensitive and if I missed one character, I received an error. I ultimately was able to reset my computer back to the factory settings and it has worked perfectly fine since. At the time I was afraid that I would spend as much money as I did for my computer not to work. Information that I would need to make a diagram of a database could vary depending on what information is being tracked. First and foremost, you would need knowledge of how to insert the data as well as how to navigate within the database. You also need to know how to create the tables within the database. Other information that would be needed would be things such as names, ID numbers, population sizes, pricing, and etc.