Course Description
This course focuses on data, a central and essential component of every information system. Providing the right data to the right decision-maker at the right time is critical. Too little data forces managers to rely on intuition and luck, while too much data can lead to cognitive overload.
Developing and utilizing high quality organizational data requires careful planning, intelligent design, and continual maintenance efforts. Through the cases, readings, classroom exercises and discussions in this course you will develop applied knowledge in four main areas. First, you will analyze real-world situations and design high fidelity data models, which are schematic drawings that define how data elements are conceptually interconnected. Second, you will convert your data models into practical relational databases, which are digital containers that hold data and preserve the various data interrelationships. Third, you will access and query structured relational databases, unlocking and converting data into useable knowledge. Fourth, you will get a practical introduction to tools for managing and utilizing unstructured large-scale databases. The skillsets associated with designing, building, manipulating and querying data are powerful, rare, and in great demand among employers across the enterprise.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyze real-world situations and learn how to design high fidelity graphical data models to explicitly reveal underlying interrelationships between data elements;
- Convert your data models into practical database structures, using relational database software tools such as MySQL and phpMyAdmin;
- Query structured relational databases, using Structured Query Language (SQL) and Business Intelligence (BI) tools; and,
- Explore unstructured “big data” datasets, using frameworks, concepts and tools such as Hadoop, NoSQL, MongoDB, Tableau and Python.
Elective