Unit 9

This week's unit was on databases. This is really foreign territory to me. Not like this entire semester hasn't been pretty foreign... There were many concepts that were confusing at first such as ERDs (Entity Relationship Diagrams), data modeling concepts, normalization, etc. While reading a Wikipedia article I learned an easy way to differentiate between ER (Entity Relationship) types:
Common Noun -- Entity Type
Proper Noun -- Entity
Transitive Verb -- Relationship Type
Intransitive Verb -- Attribute Type
Adjective -- Attribute for entity
Adverb -- Attribute for relationship

I also learned about the three levels of data modeling: conceptual, logical, and physical. And how these models can be separate yet build upon each other. The concept of normalization was very confusing at first. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd normal form took some getting used to and I still don't have all the requirements down even after multiple tutorials and several readings. Crow's foot notation also helped to make things clear as mud concerning normalization. Then there's cardinality, optionality, atomicity.... the list goes on.

Overall I have a general grasp of what was covered in Unit 9. I hope it all becomes clearer with time and practice (as most things do).