26 August 2022,
This week’s meetings are focused on the topic database learning. Dr. Mulya guides us through the basics of databases and how it works by theories and live simulation using SQL. On Monday, the meeting about databases began with dr. Mulya explains the whole concept of databases. Afterwards, on Tuesday, dr. Mulya continued to explain database modeling. And lastly, on Friday, dr. Mulya guides us through SQL and other database learning tools.
Database itself is known to be an organized collection of structured data (information) stored (typically) in a computer system, itcan be through Microsoft Excel, MySQL, Oracle, etc. What I understand is, a database is a set of information for us to analyze through, it should be easily accessible, readable, and manageable. And it is an important component to store big data or information, especially personal health information (in the world of medicine). Thus improving its management, accessibility, and readability will also improve its functionality as a database that is ready to be used and analyzed. I am an organized person, so subconsciously I like to store and organize information for my work and other needs. Google Form and Google Spreadsheets are the most commonly used for my daily activities also for doing assessments and mini-research.
Following that, we also learned about database modeling, or steps on creating a database. dr. Mulya gave us an example by extracting a collection of data and converting it into a database. Here, we used Microsoft Access as a medium to create databases without having to code or type any programming language. It was quite a simple and brief explanation of database modeling. It also added to my knowledge of Microsoft Access, so I could create my own database when I need to.
After a lesson of database modeling, dr. Mulya progressed to learn SQL (Structured Query Language) as a programming language to create a database or export data. SQL is used to manage relational databases and to perform various operations on the data in them. Unlike R and Python, SQL has a different syntax, which also means that we have to learn it all first. Frankly, dr. Mulya explained it a bit more complicated which then left me in confusion, but after some time I finally understood how it runs and also the whole concept of it. All in all, I think learning to create and manage databases is important and beneficial in our daily lives, related or non-related to what we work because being organized is the best that we can do, and databases are manifestations of it.