It’s that time of year again, I’m teaching a course at the University of Texas, though this time i’m officially an Adjunct Professor!! That means not only are students learning all about Rails, they’re getting credit for it. I’ve taken the liberty to re-record some of my material and share it. Hopefully you’ll be able to follow along at home.

This first week we focus on databases and won’t get into Rails until the second week. Skipping around is encouraged however if you don’t understand something please go back and check the previous material.

About this class, and an Introduction to Why we use Databases

The first part of this lecture covers the format and content of the course, why we use databases, and how the web is structured around data and data storage. It’s fairly non technical, so feel free to skip if you already know how data on say Facebook gets saved when you submit a status update.

How to Store Data in a database

This second part of this lecture starts out by designing a fake database in a spreadsheet, explaining why a database is NOT like excel, and why we would want to use a database over methods you might be more familiar with. We then create a database in PostgreSQL, create tables, insert data, and query it. If you’re a beginner or have never manually manipulated a production quality database this video is for you.

Homework:

Watch command line basics, and then install Ruby & Rails on your system

Thanks

Thanks for stopping by I’m hoping to split up the content so that you can zoom into the section you’re interested in without having to go through the whole course. As always if you have questions or comments message me @schneems