Intro to Relational Databases

Intro to Relational Databases is a short 4 lesson course offered by Udacity that covers the basics of SQL databases. Lessons 1 and 2 cover basic SQL querying, including grouping, ordering and inner joins, lesson 3 addresses inserts and concerns when using a database backend for a webapp and lesson 4 covers database design principles and a few more advanced features like outer joins and subqueries. I won't get into the final project as Udacity's projects tend to be geared toward students with subscriptions.

Each lesson consist of several short videos with quizzes that involve multiple choice questions and coding exercises that revolve around altering and submitting SQL queries. The instructor is easy to understand and explains things well. The content is polished and I didn't notice any bugs, which is rare for a brand new course. On the other hand, the course is a bit too short and doesn't give beginners enough practice with newly introduced syntax before moving on. It would be helpful to give students a few short drills writing queries related to each newly introduced keyword from scratch. Also, to follow along with lesson 3, you have to download, install and interact with a virtual machine. The time necessary to download, install and figure out how to use the VM is probably more than is warranted with such a short course, although the VM may be used for other Udacity courses.

Intro to relational databases is a succinct overview of SQL basics that serves as a nice refresher for someone who has seen SQL before, but making it a little longer and providing more simple drills would probably be helpful for beginners.

I give Intro to relational databases 3.5 out of 5 stars: Good.

Taking this course now. Having considerable trouble with getting the required tools (the vagrant environment) in place so that I can just move on to the 3rd lesson. I have spent countless hours trying to get it stood up. Apparently, they do have answers to the problem on the discussion boards but you have to pay to see it - I find that extraordinary given the fact that the focus of the course is supposed to be DBMS and Python, NOT setting up vagrant environments! Absolutely no troubleshooting guidance other than an EXTREMELY SLOPPY, poor quality video that literally mentioned critically important issues as an afterthought,(like needing to modify the base python DB server code IN ADDITION TO the Vagrantfile configuration !). The virtualbox/vagrant "installation instructions" make reference to screen shots that aren't even present. They don't even provide the logins for the Ubuntu VM that gets installed so that I could at least try to troubleshoot the problem from that perspective. finally, the course itself seems to struggle when trying to describe even basic concepts like SQL - they try to oversimplify it to the point where it actually becomes confusing! Again, *very* sloppy work!