Students say

What Students Say ... about the Advance Database Design Course

Students are the best advocates for this course. They consistently give it very high ratings (6.7 - 6.9/7 under the old SET student evaluations; and 5.8/6 on SRTs). Many come back to thank me for the course, and they want others to take it and use ORM. The course provides a solid foundation for success as an IT/IS professional in data management. You will learn something substantive, useful, and have fun in the process - an engaging course.

At the bottom of this page, former students are encouraged to post a comment about the course and what it has meant for their career since taking the course.

IN THE WORKING WORLD OF IS PROFESSIONALS:

"I can't tell you how often I come across poorly designed schemas here and have the adv. database design curriculum kick into high gear! :)"

---- from one in a company which builds web sites for very large companies.

"You wouldn't believe how bad it is out there in practice"

---- from Lara, an IT consultant on database designs seen in practice.

"I soon became the in-house expert, among experienced data modelers. My colleagues were coming to me for help with their data modeling problems."

---- after only six months on the job after graduation.

DURING OR SOON AFTER COMPLETING THE COURSE:

"Great professor." "Brilliant instructor." "Loved the class."

"Enjoyed the class tremendously, one of the best I had at the U."

"I have been to the valley of ER Modeling and Relational Modeling (Normalization) and muddled through the darkness of ambiguity and misunderstanding that comes from reading the myths that are propagated by many sources. I have struggled out of the valley and began climbing the hills that lead to the mountain peak of enlightened understanding of ORM. As I continue the ascent towards the summit, I find that I am often looking back into the ER/Relational valley and gaining new insights into their details. These insights, which come with time and careful philosophical reflection, cannot be obtained while trying to drink from the river of new material that flows continuously from the mountain top. However, with careful preparation... there have been some unexpected revelations from the sources of inspiration (i.e., course lecture notes). The light of the sun is beginning to show from behind the mountain peak."

---- from H. Richard Schwarz (2010).

"Dr. Everest is a stimulating lecturer who challenges his students to think about their design goals and practices and to rethink their mental models for greater effectiveness. His presentations combine the lesson of theory and real-world experience in engaging and fun ways.

"The open source design tool used in the course supports graphical and textual communication with users in business-relevant terms, and it supports an iterative design process. The tool ultimately delivers working DDL for a normalized database implementation in a number of common DBMSs.

"Since completing the course, I‛ve confirmed in practice the usefulness and power of these design methods and tools for more effectively designing, communicating, and implementing real world databases."

---- Mark Diez, Independent Consultant, Rochester, MN (2009)