Using sql magic is not a portable skill to workplace applications, so instruction and evaluation using it just means I'll have to relearn this topic with an IDE-agnostic method later.

Moreover, the db2 ibm connection library uses outdated python libraries - it fails unless you use the specific libraries that are supported - and these libraries are incompatible with the latest version of jupyterLab. The supported version of JupyterLab is never mentioned, so you can only use the online environment, and not recreate work on your local machine. This seriously damages the usefulness of the course materials. In addition, this course has many bugs and hasn't been updated. The most aggregious bug is not providing the chicago crime database script (until you reach module 6), as db2 Lite cannot parse a 7 million row CSV. In addition, none of the csv upload services worked properly - they had page faults, parsing bugs, warnings with no inserts, and mismatched datatypes all over the place. I ended up entering them all using hand-written sql-scripts, which is just busy work and not learning.

I would not recommend this course to anyone. They would do better reading a book on python database connections that is current, uses an IDE that you might use in a work setting (pycharm, sublime, notepad++), and doesn't omit the specific library version arrangements required to make the exercises work on any machine.

This was awful!

The main issue with this course is the tools that we have to use in order to complete assignments. Learning and understanding SQL was the simple part. What I struggled with most was using IBM's DB2. This course needs to be updated and explained thoroughly because the way I struggled with just trying to get the systems to work was unnecessary. I never been so frustrated over an assignment before and this left me very discouraged. If there are any fellow students that are reading this you will need a lot of patience with this course ad if this reaches any professors ir people in charge of this course I hope that you look into this issue immediately and update the course to make the instructions clearer and more concise.

Most of the courses in the IBM data analysis certificate are annoying, but this one takes the fucking cake. i spent most of my time in this course trying to get their external tools to load and/or work properly. the videos suffer, as usual, from an apparent complete failure to proofread. the hands-on labs have the same problem. i never set up a connection with a db2 database on IBM because no one responded to the support case i opened on instruction from an otherwise deeply obfuscating error message. i waited a week for support when i should have been studying. i dunno if IBM is really in the business of developing skills, 'cause they seem to be merely in the business of pissing me the fuck off

Most of the labs are not working. Literally more than 50%. If you dont believe me, just open the forum. People on forum write about problems and bugs which are not fixed for more than over a year after response. That's crazy to imagine that such a company as IBM has such a poor working team.

The initial material is okay, but sometimes they dont even use the knowledge they provide in educatioanl videos in this course, asking you to finish labs in an old fashion way, that's never used in a real world. That sounds unbelievale, but it's true.

At this point i am thinking of refund, but taking in account the time and dedication spent, i choose to finish this certification.

Some of the labs are EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING and poorly wrritten. Even after following the instructions explicitly, I kept running into errors and problems (ESPECIALLY FOR THE Final Assignment where we had to link the database with the Jupyter notebook using the credentials on the previous lab) and doing the followup analysis. After multiple hours of trying to troubleshoot this issue and contacting support, I got nowhere! I ended up having to do the SQL coding on the DB2 page to submit my results. The authors seriously need to reconsider the presentation and quality of this lab. DIFFICULT LAB!!! Especially for week 3. TREAD LIGHTLY!!!!

Lab are the most frustrating. these are the place from where we as student get hands on experience but these instruction and IBM software platform doesn't work smoothly. We had to work on IBM based software platform such as IBN database(Ibm db2), Watson studio. I had issue in ibm bd2 software platforms loading tables and creating new credentials and could not fix that issue for several days finally gave up IBM Data Science course in "Databases and SQL for Data Science with Python". Not recommended, hope you don't get frustrated at the middle of the course

there have been numerous fail attempts to connect to Jupiter notebook to work on the assignments from me and from other peers that I can see in the discussion forum. everyone has their own technical issues which we should not have from the first place, then we have to figure out to fix ourselves based on some vague instructions from your staffs, nothing helped me unfortunately. the level of frustration exceeds the value of the course so I have to leave. Honestly please do not put up more poorly designed course like this.

Most awful, low-quality content that I've personally experienced. In one of the quizzes, there's a question that asks the student to write a query that expresses an age in the form of YYYY-MM-DD. One of the students has asked in the discussion forums for clarification and seems to be confused about the question but a staff member seems to think that the question is valid. Does Coursera bother to spot check the content and quizzes to ensure at least a minimum standard of quality/clarity/accuracy?

The educators for this unit are pathetic. They are more concerned with making sure they have replied to questions in the discussion than actually giving correct and useful information. They repeated don't read the troubleshooting that students have already done, and provide the same instructions giving in the course that clearly weren't helpful in the first place. I spent hours troubleshooting the problems I faced myself because as the "help" the educators offered was inadequate!!!!!!!!!

Regret taking this course. The course is about promoting their IBM cloud database. I had issues (IBM server problem) and I couldn't complete most of the assignments and Final assignment. Reached out for help and no help was offered even after I reached out multiple times. I also reached out to IBM support, no help from them either. Do not take this course. I had to complete it (with minimum passing grade) because this was one of the courses in a Specialization that I am working on.

Waste of time if I can't use the resources you prefer.

On two occassions, separated by at least two weeks, I attempted to obtain an IBM Cloud account. On both occasions the IBM sign up process errored out with:

Of course this error doesn't occur til well after their attempts to collect some PII.

With some of the other problems I've experienced in other Coursera classes I have to wonder if Coursera is trying to become the next Udemy.

Content wise this course is fine.

The problem is the use of IBM cloud. If your free trial runs out the course offers a coupon for more time. However this coupon is no longer offered. You can't access IBM cloud and then you can't complete the course.

It took me several, emotional hours trying to fix it before I contacted coursera customer service to help me. The organisers of the actual course from IBM were very unhelpful/didn't care.

Little to no programming in this course. Lessons were purely theoretical. The quizzes were a joke, since we just had to memorize a bunch of useless words.

We spent more time learning about IBM's terrible programs

Only good thing about this is that I managed to complete the whole "Introduction to Data Science" specialization during the free trial period.

Don't waste and money and look for a better course at DataCamp or CodeCademy

This course forces us to use the IBM Cloud database, which is fine up to the point if one can use it. I have spent so many hours trying to access the IBM cloud using the subscription voucher provided in the course, but it kept giving an error. I was never able to access the account, due to which I couldn't complete my final assignment. There is no option of contacting someone to fix the error. It was such a waste of time!

It is absolutely terrible! I am glad that I have scholarship for this course and I didn't pay for it. Lots of issues with IBM Cloud and they are not well-addressed by TAs and stuff. Course is very limited in terms of its SQL coverage and assessments at the end of weeks are poorly-designed. I definitely do not recommend this course. There are way better courses on SQL on other platforms such as Udemy and EdX.

This course may have been good, but the password security requirements to set up the IBM cloud account to do the practice work was impossible to acheive. After an hour of trying many passwords, including those from password generators designed to create strong passwords, I was never able to sucessfully create an account so I was forced to stop the course.

all the proprietory IBM Watson and cloud services stuff just distracts from the meat of what I wanted out of the course series. It's not user friendly and required so many steps that had nothing to do with data it was far more frustrating than helpful. I hated every step of the first 5 courses. I'd really like my money back.

The course is poorly structured. It provides little explanation as to what environments to use for labs, or where exactly to download/access them. Some tasks just assume you already know where to go and where to enter the commands. The instructions should be more in a step-by-step fashion, and easier for beginners.

On week two and already have issues. Labs FAILED to work and the Db2 program is NOT FUNCTIONING. I contacted IBM and they said this is a KNOWN issue. On top of that, you cant download the CSV files in the lab so how can they even be exported to MySQL or another program? This course is a MAJOR FAIL. STAY FAR AWAY.

Cannot progress through the course, because it needs access to IBM Db2 cloud service, but after following the instructions, I still get several errors. This is apparently a common issue, as posted on the message board.

The whole use of IBM platforms is troublesome in the whole data science ibm certificate.

really rushed course, with not much of an explanation. everything is copy paste. I struggled to understand why it gave me error on inputting a date, only to find out in the next course how I am supposed to write dates. It's not good to learn by copy pasting, if the concepts aren't explained properly.

At first, Datasette wasn't working; then IBM DB 2 was giving errors after an "ALTER TABLE" query; for the last, SQL Magic wasn't set correctly. This course was a mess. In discussion forums, I have seen people falling behind from their shcedules because of these errors, and there were barely answers.

This course is incredibely outdated. The content is good however the tools that you are suppose to work with are not Free to use like they tell you they are. The Claim IBM Cloud Feature Codes, do not work, therefore you cannot extend your trial version of the ImbCloud and cannot do the tasks.

Trying to unenroll from this course BECAUSE ***IBM will not let me create an account and I'm done wasting my time with that. All the other courses are great- strongly dislike this one. Will finish later as last course and find another SQL online class hoping they have DO NOT use IBM.

The worst course I have ever done. All participants were confused in the final assignment and the instructions were very poorly organized. Lack of clarity and the instructions being very outdated and incorrect lead to thousands of annoyed and stressed students. Waste of time.