There are gaps between some lectures where you would end up completely lost because a certain subject is not explained at all.

A very boring way to bring up the subject.

Quite outdated

can't wait to rate this course! I hope I could give 1 start but to show respect I rated it 2. It's just because I personally don't like the instructor and the way he talks, which could ruin the course! I truly hope we could have another instructor in the following courses or the whole specialization would be ruined and so would my interest in database.

This is the most horrible online course I have ever taken. The topic is super interesting but explained rather poorly and the material is not really good (also perhaps too many topics are included in the course).

One of the most horrible and stupid things are the assignments: these are not graded by the teachers but by other students; this leads to the fact that many students just upload random material because in many cases the peer review is not really performed and the assignment is considered approved anyways.

On the contrary, I have experienced some revenge-behaviour from one of the students that submitted empty assignments: he/she marked my submission as not relevant (because I did so to him/her twice since he/she uploaded only an empty template)!

In the end you do not even have the chance to check if your assignment was actually good or not

There are many other drawbacks to this course but I really do not want to spend not even a second of my time with it so I'll close it here! stay away, it's mostly a waste of time

In addition to outdated information in the query section, and some unnecessary focus on female genitalia in some assignments, the teaching is poor.

The videos and curriculum do not focus on how to make good database management decisions. Instead, they focus on how to make good /diagramming/ decisions based on requirements.

The presenter seems to go out of his way to avoid explaining core concepts, and instead breezes over them with ambiguous business-sounding definitions. Most videos, especially later on, feel like they go out of their way to complain about how students "just don't get it" and focus on how to draw diagrams correctly instead of make good choices for organizing a database.

If your goal is to understand more about databases and how to manage them, this course is not for you.

If your goal is to become really good at diagramming databases, this might work, but is still a poor quality course.

Very cumbersome course. Not useful. Very basic. No RM theory. Lots of wasted time on "trivia questions' (why are they there??) Lots of time wasting repetitions ("welcome to the course blablabla") for a 1-min video. Can't believe the quality is so poor. Audio is legible though, unlike many other courses.

This is the worst course I have ever seen in my life, I'm ain't lying these guys use the terms which they haven't thought and they use it so frequently as if they have thought it, One who were teaching may be industrial experts and have lot's of experience, but one thing to note is:

Teaching is an art...

LET ME UNSUBSCRIBE!!! WTF

Professor Mannino's teaching style is very engaging and his lectures are well-structured making you think about the material being taught. This course introduces the basics of database design including Entity Relationship Diagrams(ERDs) and SQL statements like CREATE, SELECT, INSERT, WHERE, CONSTRAINTS, and GROUP BY. You can choose between installing MySQL, Oracle and PostgreSQL for this course. What I like most about the quizzes and assignments is that these are the ones you can solve yourself if you re-watch the lecture videos and do the practice exercises. In contrast to some other Coursera courses that I have done, where I simply did not know where to start with an assignment unless I googled github and stackoverflow. Here you will find a very comprehensive and self-contained course. One of the best specialisations on Coursera, in my opinion.

My impression is very good. During this course I was able to learn fundamental DB concepts, that helped me to expand my expertise.

I'm grateful to Prof. Manino beacuse his lectures and their structure were entertaining and provided good explanation of database design concepts. Also it was very nice to gain expertise with Oracle, and I recommend to choose it over MySQL, however you should take into account your needs. The course provides solid foundation and overall i give it 5 stars.

There is also field of improvement, last modules assignments lacked consistesy (traces of earlier versions of assignments, insufficient problem descriptions) and i think they should be revised.

I recommend this course, and will continue learning this specialization.

This is a very good introduction to databases, how the evolved, what they do and why we need them. The presentations are easy to follow and a good number of resources is provided to deepen the understanding and to practice.

While there are, of course, technical chapters that require the student to delve into a high level of detail, a large focus is on understanding the business problem that needs to be solved. Detailed knowledge and practice are necessary, but knowing how to join tables is not what makes a good database manager.

Understanding and assessing requirements, identifying missing or redundant information are far more important.

Thanks, Michael, for this course.

Excellent course!

It was my 1st experience with Coursera and I didn't expect that online learning can be so stimulating and exciting. The biggest advantage of this course is its very practical approach and fact that each week there is assignment. The only disadvantage here is the fact that this course has been more time-consuming that I initially expected it to be hence I had to spend more time on it than estimated 3-6 hours a week. For full-time working person it was not easy to keep up with deadlines, especially the weeks with 2 assignments per week. Nevertheless - truly intensive and interestingly presented. I strongly recommend:)

The course offered me an incredible opportunity to re-learn some of the foundations related to Relational Database Management Systems, especially some of the standard SQL commands (CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE & SELECT), guidelines for effective query formulation, Entity Relationship, and Relational Diagrams, and normalization (especially the Boyce-Codd Normal Form)...

Professor Mannino did a fantastic job in explaining the course materials as well as the practice problems and assignment questions did allow me to strengthen and test my skills... The community was also really helpful and kind...

The exposure in this course is mind blowing. The contents are well structured and Michael's delivery is top notch. It gives a good foundation to database management concepts, and builds from there to more advanced topics. I'm very happy I discovered and took this course. There's something about the delivery of this course that keeps luring me back to finish it up whenever I have any outstanding assignment. Thanks Columbia University and Michael for this wonderful course. I'm now more knowledgeable in this aspect and I look forward to the rest of the courses in the specialisation.

Prof. Mannino is brilliant in structuring this course about Database Management Essential.

You really end up with a strong and structured understanding of the essential concepts of relational databases and a bit of practice.

You learn about: table creation, then SQL Queries, then ERDs, then translation of ERDs into tables, and about database normalisation

The concept of Functional Dependency and Normalisation is a tiny bit short in my opinion. At the end of the course, I'm not sure I really understand BCNF Normalisation... That could be improved!

THANK YOU TO PROF. MANNINO!

Wonderful course. As an Electronic Engineer, I've always have a lack of Knowledge in Data Base structures. Nowadays, not only software applications but software based hardware solutions depend on this infra structure to warehouse data and information. Moreover, we live today in an Analytic world, deep mining knowledge to make decisions every day. This Course met all expectation I had and I want to get trough specialization track. By the way, professor Mannino is a great mentor and quality of support material (book, slides, assignment, etc.) is totally above the line.

Professor Mannino did a fantastic job explaining the course materials, and the practise problems and assignment questions did allow me to strengthen and test my skills. The course offered me an incredible opportunity to re-learn some of the foundations related to relational database management systems, especially some of the standard SQL commands (CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and SELECT), guidelines for effective query formulation, entity relationships, relational diagrams, and normalization (especially the Boyce-Codd Normal Form).

This is a very well crafted course. The instructor clearly knows the topic and speaks fluently. The course material is easy to follow. The course covers all the essentials for database management. These are really just the essentials. I would have loved to learn and practice more about joins and more complex SQL statements. If you want to get started with database management or need a refresher, this is the course of your choice.

The extra materials (slides) are very helpful and can be understood without watching the videos again.

This course is very well put together with detailed video lectures, many realistic practice example and extensive problem sets. It requires a lot of work but it can be accomplished quickly if you are dedicated. You can quickly acknowledge the value of the course by the amount of work the professors put into creating this course. If you want a course that gives you are complete introduction and detailed development of Databases and Database Modelling incl. MySQL and Oracle. This is the course for you.

I have taken a few courses on Database concepts and SQL and was never quite satisfied with the theoretical explanations. Professor Mannino does a really good job explaining important concepts like joins and some of the pitfalls to avoid. If you are like me , then you want to listen more than once to each video. His query formulation guidelines are very valuable technique to use when approaching difficult problems. I am not yet done with the course but i feel already it deserves an honest review.

Database Management Essentials can be a very helpful course for students who want to learn the basics of database design, entity relationship model, and SQL. This course has sufficient theory related materials and practice problems to not only develop a good understanding but also implementation skills. Michael Mannino has been very good instructor.

Since I have had some knowledge about SQL prior to this course, I expected to gain more than simple SQL related skills from this course.

Extremely usefull cource. As an intern business-analyst I've found it to be very informative, fullfilled with practical and theoretical information, which allowed me to get new skills, higly required because of need to deal with databases. It really helps in my work and gives opportunity to get a full-time permanent job. Thank You very much, professor Mannino, I'm looking forward to learning the other cources of this specialization!

The course is very informative to anybody who is thinking about stepping into the world of databases. You will get a taste of everything from data modelling to writing SQL statements in a database environment of your choice. The only part of the course I feel that needed a bit more clarity was the section based on normalization and its use cases.

This course is very well structured with clear information provided in videos and additional PPT's. The assignments are of the right level: you can only pass them if you really studied the material. I had some practical experience, so it was very nice to get a bit more 'book smart' too.

I am going on with the module in this course!