CSUMB Learning Journal

  So we’re finally done! Not that it will meaningfully affect my grade but I received a 0/5 on the Lab 18 Peer Review assignment for some reason even though I did it. Look into that, or don’t… Briefly summarize what you consider to be the three (3) most important things you learned in this course. I think the three most important things I learned in this class were the fundamentals of database design including things like third normal form and what the components of a database system are, how to write SQL queries to use a database, and lastly the differences between different types of databases; such as relational databases like SQL and document databases like MongoDB. There were a lot of other things like all of the work done with Java that helped advance my understanding of databases too.

Prompt for this week's journal entry. Compare MongoDB with MySQL. What are some similarities? MySQL and MongoDB are similar in the sense that they are both database management systems. They both have their own query languages that allow you to manage and manipulate any stored data. What are some differences? One of the biggest differences between MySQL and MongoDB is how they store data. MySQL stores data in tables whereas MongoDB basically uses JSON documents for storing data without a strict schema. In that way MySQL is much more structured and rigid. MongoDB is also capable of vertical and horizontal scaling while MySQL can’t be scaled across multiple systems. When would you choose one over the other? I would choose MySQL for smaller scale projects that require advanced queries to retrieve data in unique ways. MongoDB seems like a much better choice for large scale projects that may need to be scaled up to handle larger datasets and more bandwidth. I’m much less familiar with M...

This week we learned about Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and used what we learned about it in Lab 17 and Lab 19. JDBC is a Java API for interacting with SQL. I believe that Lab 19 was the first time that we interacted with the MySQL database through a web interface with Java. It was interesting to see how the Java libraries interacted with the database and I learned a lot.