Introduction to the pragmatic teaching of database concepts

Databases play a crucial role in today's connected world. Generally, they are \ud invisible to a customer or employee, yet are 'under the hood' of nearly every \ud web site and business application. Essentially a good understanding of \ud databases allows us to effectively deal with data such that we have \ud worthwhile information. This paper describes a practical approach to \ud teaching essential database theory to computer studies students and \ud undergraduate education students. It highlights a practical approach to \ud illustrating set theory in terms of diagrammatic examples and relates this to \ud junior mathematics concepts. While we discuss the importance of \ud representing data in usable forms we will relate these principles to the SQL \ud language and demonstrate how students can use this in both junior and \ud senior computer studies courses for a greater concrete understanding of \ud database concepts. Further to this, we describe a number of affordable and \ud easy to use, yet powerful tools that are available to all students. We also \ud make links between simple programming languages and back end databases