Database Systems Concepts & Design

GIT's course on Database Management System is the best course there is on the subject. It is an undergraduate-level course on DBMS, but graduates and professionals will benefit from it alike.

The course starts out with fundamentals of databases, modelling a database and relation-based models. It firms your grasp on these basics before moving on the four phases of software engineering unique to database management: Analysis, Specification, Design and Implementation.

Each phase contains a portion of the syllabus studied in depth. The entity-based model and ER diagrams are taught in the Analysis phase, while SQL and Relational Algebra and Calculus are discussed in Design.

I was taking this course concurrently with my second-year University course on the same subject, and was greatly benefited in my semesters. I recommend this course to all.

Pros: self-paced, lucid explanation, most of the topics are explained in depth, and the topics are segregated into phases that belong to software engineering, thus preparing us to tackle problems of the same arena.

Cons: a few topics, like SQL, are not dealt in great depth; very few assignments overall (although there are a couple of "Knowledge Checks" to check your grasp on the topic time to time).