Learning Journal

Briefly summarize what you consider to be the three (3) most important things you learned in this course. First, I would say it's very important to remember how different joins will affect the result set of a query. I found applying multiple joins to a single query nerving as I was not always confident my result set would turn out the way I intended and would have to tweak my statements at times to get it right. Secondly, I believe it's important to remember how data storage orientation affects the amount of storage we may waste or the amount of time we may add for inserts and updates. Unfortunately, we did not get the opportunity to test these differences out on a scale that significantly displays these effects, so this will need to be something I remember over time until I can simulate and visually see the differences. Lastly, I think it's important to remember how to establish connections to intelliJ (or other IDEs) from MySQL Workbench and MongoDB. I don't want to l...

Compare MongoDB with MySQL.  What are some similarities?  Both MongoDB and MySQL support indexes and have built in query languages. They are also both compatible with a variety of programming languages like  python and java What are some differences?  MongoDB is schema less, where MySQL is not. MongoDB stores  data in documents and uses its own query language called MQL, where MySQL stores  data in tables and uses SQL as the query language of choice. When would you choose one over the other?  I will choose MySQL when I need to use complex joins and need the compliances that come with ACID.  MongoDB would be my choice when I need to use flexible, unstructured data.

  Summarize what you have learned this week.  This week we learned that there are various types of programming languages, including imperative and declarative. Imperative languages utilize control flow statements while declarative do not. Two languages that fall under imperative language include procedural and object-oriented. We also learned how to use embedded SQL using C programming language, about a variety of application programming interfaces, and how to establish connections between MySQL Workbench databases and IntelliJ. Once a connection is established, statements or prepared statements can be used to insert, update, and delete  data within a SQL database. We learned that some APIs will not only support drivers for databases, but also other APIs as well. We've learned that statements and prepare statements can be reutilized to insert, update, and delete multiple rows of data. An important detail is that each statement, result set and connection should be explicit...

  If indexes are supposed to speed up performance of query,  what does the author mean by a slow index?  The author indicates that a slow index occurs when a query performs slower than expected despite using an index. To ensure a query has found all entries matching the search criteria, the database will need to read all the nodes within the final chain, which will consist of a large number of operations and slow the process. In addition to the database's need to read all the nodes within the chain, the database will also need to read data from different table blocks, which will only slow the process even more. The author specifies that though a slow index can consist of slower than normal queries, it doesn't necessarily mean the index is broken or useless.