INF10002 Database Analysis

and Design
Learning summary report

You will submit this report as evidence of the tasks you submitted as part of your
Assignment 1: Learning portfolio. This will be checked against the tests you completed
and the tasks you submitted and will determine your final grade. 

Name:_ Nguyen Thanh Dat

Student ID: 103804881

Section A: Self-assessment

Self-assessment grade application

The following checklists provide an overview of your self-assessment for this unit. Tick
the box with the grade you are applying for.

Pass Credit Distinction High Distinction

Self-
assessment V
(please tick)

Self-assessment statement
Tick the boxes in the following checklist that indicate the tasks you have submitted to
support your grade application.

Included /
Pass (Minimum Pass checklist) Completed
[please tick]

Learning Summary Report V

Pass task 1 V

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Pass task 2 V

Pass task 3 V

Pass task 4 V

Pass task 5 V

Test 1 V

Test 2 V

Included /
Credit (Minimum Credit checklist) Completed
[please tick]
All requirements met in Pass criteria above (including the
V
Learning summary report)

Credit task 1 V

Credit task 2 V

Credit task 3 V

Credit task 4 V

Credit task 5 V

Included /
Distinction (Minimum Distinction checklist) Completed
[please tick]
All requirements met in Pass and Credit criteria above (including
V
the Learning summary report)

Distinction task V

Test 3 V

Included /
High Distinction [Minimum High Distinction Checklist] Completed
[please tick]
All requirements met in Pass, Credit and Distinction criteria above V

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 (including the Learning summary report)

High distinction task V

Section B: Reflection

Part 1
Introduction

In the beginning of this semester, INF10002 had caught my attention since it

perfectly lines up with my career path: Becoming a Data Scientist. I got so excited when I
saw the modules that includes fundamental database concepts and all the tools such as
PowerBI, Access, and SQL. This report summaries my learning journey in INF10002
through reflections.

Aspects I found challenging

Prior to this course, I had taken many programs online about data science and
data analytics. Hence, I got a good idea of the concepts and tools learned in this course,
such as SQL and PowerBI. However, that does not mean this course is useless, but
rather the other way around. I found the contents in each week leverage my knowledge
to another level. For instance, I might had learned about databases, but I never really
learned about building an actual database. Through learning about the fundamental
concepts, ERD, and tools such as Access, I now feel confident with the idea of analysing
business narrative, design ERDs, and build databases on either Access or SQL. I would
say that if a person does not have any prior knowledge about data or database, they
would find this course quite difficult with all the new concepts and tools.

The HD task was quite challenging to do. I would discuss more in the section
below.

Aspects I found inspiring

As I have mentioned above, my dream job is to become a data scientist, and part
of the job is data engineering. Thus, learning about database analysis and design is
exactly what I would want to strengthen my understanding of data engineer. Prior to
this course, I did not fully understand the functions of Access; I only thought it was a
place to store data and failed to understand why people don’t just use Excel instead.
However, after learning about relational database, I found Access very useful to build a
basic database for small businesses. On top of that, Access is relatively easy to use, and
you can interact with via a GUI instead of using queries like SQL. Access would be a very
good starting point for people who like to learn about database design. All in all, it
opened a door for me to explore different characteristics of a relational database.

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 Another inspiring concept is ERD. ERD is a completely new concept to me, and it
blew my mind when I first learned about it. The concept of ERD describes the
relationships between data tables so well that I find building databases to solve
businesses’ problems interesting and not challenging at all. Of course, there are so
much more to build a database, but ERD is a good guidance to analyse and establish a
database. After building many ERDs from weekly exercises and portfolio tasks, I actually
enjoy drawing ERD now. It is almost like solving a case where you must put all clues into
correct positions to draw connections between them.

Aspects I found interesting

I found normalisation a very interesting technique to clean data. Before, I only

knew about removing duplicates, dealing with missing values, but never dealt with
messy data such as multiple values in a cell. Moreover, normalisation allows me to spot
and solve current problems with the business’ database, instead of developing a new
one. It also gives me a glance of my dream job’s work. Combining with what I had
learned before, I am now even more confident with data cleaning process.

Database’s transaction is also an absorbing concept to me. It explained to me

how a business information system work when dealing with transactions, which is a
concept I learned in my other 2 classes ICT10001 and INF10003 but never get to
understand deeply how.

Aspects I found different from expectations

Despite all the fun I had, I found the contents about data visualisation, or
PowerBI, different from my expectation. Don’t get me wrong, the contents covered the
basic of PowerBI very well, but I expected it to be more than just that. Moreover, I wish
we could get to learn other data viz techniques and applications, such as Python, R,
Tableau, etc.

Another area I found different from my expectation is SQL. I expected to learn to

use tools such as Microsoft SQL SM Studio or BigQuery to store data and practice
queries. It is not a negative thing, Feenix iSQL worked just fine and it is also a good place
to practice SQL. It’s just that the other tools are more practical and used in real work
environment. Also, it is much easier to import data on the tools I have mentioned.

How I solved problems before/after taking this course.

Prior to this course, when dealing with data, I mostly used Excel and Python to
clean, manipulate, and visualise. Moreover, all the dataset I dealt with is discrete and
non-relational. After this course, I began to use Access to clean, store, and manage
small relational database and used PowerBI to visualise. I realised that PowerBI is a

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great tool to quickly visualise without coding. On top of that, it also has an option to use
Python to visualise the data, so it is very convenient for me.

Areas I explored beyond and I planned on learning

As I mentioned above, PowerBI, or data visualisation in general, is an aspect that

I would love to explore beyond what this course offers. I had taken some small classes
online to learn deeply about this subject. During the process, the material on Canvas
helped me a lot with reviewing basic concepts such as how to import data and draw
relationship between tables. Now, I am confident in visualising data in Tableau,
PowerBI, and Python.

Other areas I planned on learning further includes data warehouse, data

cleaning, and NoSQL since it would be crucial to my career path.

Ideas/Techniques/Principles for further learning

All the concepts and techniques about analyse and design databases such as
ERD, relational database, data visualisation, NoSQL, data warehouse, etc. are definitely
going to be important for me. I’m planning on becoming a data scientist after all.
However, not all of the contents will be relevant to others since their future might be
different from me. That said, I also concluded some principles through my learning
journey with INF10002.

One principle I had learned in this course is: If you’re confused, review the slides.
About 80% of the time, I found an answer to my problem on lecture slides. I’m sure I can
apply this to other technical class I would take in the future. Another principle is “Google
contains all the answers, you just need to know how to”. I found “googling” is a crucial
technique for everybody, especially in technical people. During the learning process, I
had encountered countless errors and problems while dealing with Access, PowerBI,
and iSQL. If I did not know how to google, I would be stuck with unsolvable errors and
slow down my learning process. All in all, review the slides and learn how to google are
2 principles I would apply in the future learning.

Part 2
D TASK REFLECTION
Aspects I found interesting/challenging/inspiring or different from expectations

I didn't notice any differences between the Distinction task and the other tasks
I've completed in this course. I only felt that the difficulty of the ERD narrative had
increased because I was unable to easily complete Part 2. Both of my diagrams
underwent numerous changes, including new entities, new relationships, and new
attributes. It was slightly harder when compared to the practice ERDs I designed from

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weeks 7-9. In comparison to part 2, I found parts 3 and 4 to be a piece of cake because I
have worked with visualisations and queries most of the time. Moreover, I found it
interesting that I got my own data generated by an Excel macro; the data generated is
unique for me. I think it is very clever to avoid plagiarism if a student is intended to copy
someone else’ queries.

Part 3
HD TASK REFLECTION
Aspects I found interesting/challenging/inspiring or different from expectations

The High Distinction task is significantly harder than I anticipated. It is not totally
different from the other tasks, but I had to do all of the work myself. From coming up
with a business narrative to design and create relational database, populate data, and
build reports and visualisations, all those processes are my own ideas. I chose to build a
relational database for a Zoo. At first, I thought it would be easy to come up with a zoo
narrative, but it was quite tricky and I had to do researches on Google to understand
basic components of a zoo. After coming up with entities, the next part is coming with
reasonable attributes that a zoo would need to analyse its data. Then, I need to
determine the relationship between entities, present new intersection entities, and
connect them together. After that, I design an ERD via Visio as well as a relational
schema. From that schema, I designed a database on Access that satisfy all the tables,
relationships, and attributes. The next part is populating data. I need to be careful and
constantly check for data integrity when populate data. For instance, I could not use
Zookeeper Id that does not exist in the ZOOKEEPER table. After populating data, I used
queries (SQL) on Access and PowerBI to produce reports and visualisations. All in all, the
HD task is on another level in comparison to previous tasks.

Although the HD task is quite challenging, I enjoyed doing it because it allows me

to use my own mind instead of following instructions. It is truly a pleasure. However, I
wish we could have done an optional case study that would require more data cleaning,
manipulation, and analytics. Don’t get me wrong, I understand this is a database design
and analysis course, not data analytics, but I just wish there were a task that can put
both together. Maybe in the future courses I might have a chance.

Ideas/techniques/principles that can be generalised and used in other areas or for

further learning.
As I mentioned above, all of the concepts and techniques would be useful for me
in my future career. Moreover, I found all the skills demonstrated in this High
Distinction task could be used to build my portfolio to apply for internships.

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