[Tfug] [dmcbee at email.arizona.edu: A Seminar on Relational Data Bases and Social Research]

[Claude Rubinson]

Hi all,

I'm going to be giving a primer on relational databases and thought
that it might be of interest to some on the mailing list.  It's aimed
at social scientists, so the examples will be social scientific in
nature and there might be some jargon but overall the talk should be
pretty accessible.  Most social scientists don't have any experience
with relational databases, so it will be pretty basic stuff---theory,
normalization, three-valued logic, review of RDBMSes (basically, MySQL
versus Postgres and why to avoid MS Access), etc.

Claude


----- Forwarded message from Dave McBee <dmcbee at email.arizona.edu> -----

From: Dave McBee <dmcbee at email.arizona.edu>
Date:         Tue, 6 Oct 2009 16:13:09 -0700
Subject: A Seminar on Relational Data Bases and Social Research
To: SOCGRADS at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

Claude Rubinson of the Sociology Department has agreed to give a seminar on
relational data bases and their use in social scientific research.  This will
take place October 19th from 1pm to 3pm in room 415 of the social sciences
building.  Goodies will be provided and anyone is welcome to attend.

"Using Relational Databases and SQL for Social Scientific Research:
                       Theory and Practice"

Social researchers are increasingly making use of relational
databases, which provide a powerful, flexible framework for
organizing, managing, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data.
This seminar will introduce the basics of relational database theory
and data modeling.  We will discuss the advantages and disadvantages
of using relational databases as part of the social scientific
research process, with an eye on how best to use them with
conventional qualitative and quantitative social scientific research
packages.

The seminar will introduce the Structure Query Language (SQL), which
is used to query and manipulate relational databases.  A number of
relational database management systems exist, and we will discuss
their relative advantages and disadvantages for social scientific
research.  By the end of the seminar, participants should have a
better understanding of why (or why not) they might wish to use a
relational database for their next research project, how to do so,
and, importantly, where to go for additional help.  A Q&A session will
follow.

[           * socgrads at listserv.arizona.edu *            ]
[       questions: contact rubinson at u.arizona.edu        ]


----- End forwarded message -----