For many of the courses I teach, the primary content is either presented in class or in the examples and writings online, and the required or recommended books act more as reference material. For this course, most of the course content is in the reading assignments in the two required books, Database Design and A Guide to SQL.
Those two books will be your "lecture" material about database design, relational databases, and SQL. I'll give you the reading assignments, a brief explanation of what you should be learning, and some type of assignment that lets you practice to see if you understand each topic.
The exception will be the material about HTML and PHP, which I will present with examples and links throughout the course.
I'll be presenting the relevant parts of the PHP web programming language that will enable you to write database applications for the web. For the most part, you should be able to take examples I've provided to use as close models for the assignments you'll have. In a couple cases I will just give you entire functions or sections of code, explain it a little bit, and then just tell you to copy and paste them for something you are doing.
I usually characterize the CIS 248 course as "PHP with a little bit of SQL", and the CIS 210 course as "SQL with a little bit of PHP". Those of you who have already taken CIS 248 will have an easier time with this course. The flip side is that those of you taking this course first will have an easier time when you take CIS 248. It balances out whichever way you do this.
The lessons that follow roughly approximate a week-by-week schedule from classroom sections of this course. Most lessons have an assignment at the end. Some of the assignments are practice with SQL commands, and others are multipart assignments that result in web applications combining user input with SQL.
The web applications are designed to closely mimic the framework of the types of database applications commonly found on the web and elsewhere. The intent is to give you structural models that you can use in future applications.
Please see the assignment schedule in the syllabus and read the syllabus thoroughly if you have not yet done so. I'll re-state here that you should e-mail me (mpelczarski@elgin.edu) when you complete each assignment so I know to check it. Please go over the "assignment checklist" for each lesson before you do so, just to make sure that you've completed what is expected.
If you have questions or are stuck on anything, send me an e-mail! If there's a section of code that is giving you trouble, you can paste it right into the e-mail. You can also make sure the file is uploaded to the cis2 server and let me know the name of the file and I can FTP in and have a look. Please be as specific as you can in describing the problem and let me know what lines of code I should focus on, if you have an idea.
Of course we always have old technologies like the telephone, or you can even come and see me in person during office hours! Don't tear your hair out if you're stumped. It happens to all of us, and the reason I'm here is to help.
- Mark