From the course: Learning Relational Databases

What you should know

From the course: Learning Relational Databases

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What you should know

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- [Instructor] To get the most out of this course, I simply expect that you have some data needs and are looking for ways to improve the storage, retrieval and maintenance of that data. Maybe you're starting a business and will need to track inventory and payroll. Perhaps you've already got a series of Excel spreadsheets or other data tables, and you've been told that you should make your data into a database for efficiency's sake. Or perhaps you've taken an introductory course in a particular database management system such as SQL Server or Microsoft Access. And while you understand the workings of that particular system, you're having troubles bridging the gap from how you get your information about real-world events into a database structure. This is actually a really common problem and the solution is to take a step back and look at the fundamentals of how you model your data. I've prepared this informational course to be as software-independent as possible so that it's applicable to a wide variety of relational database software. In fact, most of the things that we're going to be talking about require a little more than a pad of paper and a pencil to work out. This is because the initial steps of creating a database are common across a wide variety of platforms. Eventually, we will all go our separate ways into a specific software package to actually build a database. Some will choose packages like SQL Server or MySQL or Oracle or Access or PostgreSQL. And for that we'll need specific training on the package of choice. But for now, just grab a pencil and be prepared to think about your data from a variety of angles.

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