The Urban Big Data Centre at the University of Glasgow is pleased to announce the return of our SASNet data skills training programme for summer 2017.

The programme will run from 1st August - 6th September offering an opportunity for skills development in key areas of data analytics, methods, and data management. Please visit http://ubdc.ac.uk/outreach-plus-training/sasnet/summer-training-2017 to view the full selection of courses.

Please contact keith.maynard@glasgow.ac.uk with any enquiries about the training programme.

”Beyond Excel”: PostgreSQL for Data Management

Course instructor: Rod Walpole, UBDC, University of Glasgow

Course duration: half day (Tuesday 29th August 2017, 1:30pm – 4:30pm)

Course location: Jura teaching lab, Level 4 Annexe, Glasgow University Library

Audience: Social scientists, students and practitioners - anyone with responsibility for producing and managing datasets

Fees: £25 - For UK registered students
£35 - For staff at UK academic institutions, Research Council UK funded researchers, UK public sector staff and staff at UK registered charity organisations
£50 - For all other participants

Pre-requisite knowledge: This course continues of from our morning course 'Getting started with Data Management' that can be registered for separately here. We would recommend a knowledge of the fundamental data principles covered in this course.

Course summary:

This course is aimed at users working with larger datasets that would be difficult to analyse using spreadsheet applications such as Excel.

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system. It has more than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness. It runs on all major operating systems, including Linux, UNIX (including macOS), and Windows. It can handle very large datasets with hundreds of millions of rows and individual tables up to 32TB in size.

Throughout the course of the afternoon, you will learn how to perform fundamental database operations using PostgreSQL such as data loading, linkage, queries and creating a variety of outputs. The course will demonstrate these techniques by allowing participants to use a variety of example datasets from UBDC's open data collection. These data may include: aggregate health data from ISD, Scottish Census geographic data (output areas, datazones, LSOA), SIMD and other Scottish Government open data and Strava.

Course content:

Course participants will be introduced to the following:

• Overview of PostgreSQL and database technology
• Creating a database
• An introduction to database objects (tables, indexes, constraints, views, functions) and schemas
• Common data types
• Creating database tables and loading data
• Querying the data
• Visualising / exporting the results
• Using PostgreSQL with other technologies (QGIS, R, LibreOffice)

Payment and registration:

Lunch will be provided in the break room adjacent to the IT lab - please specify any dietary or access requirements when registering.

Payment by card preferred.

If you are unable to pay by debit or credit card we are able to accept payment by invoice. Please supply the following information by e-mail to keith.maynard@glasgow.ac.uk within 14 days of registering on Eventbrite in order to confirm your place on the course:

• Contact name for invoice
• Purchase Order number (note that the supplier is University of Glasgow)
• Contact e-mail address for payment correspondence
• Full name of organisation/department
• VAT registration (if applicable)
• Currency
• Address for Invoice to be sent and telephone number

To cancel your place and request a refund, please email keith.maynard@glasgow.ac.uk. Please note that a refund of course fees less 10% administrative charge can only be issued if you cancel your place in writing at least 7 days prior to the course after which time fees will be non-refundable. Substitutes can be made at no extra charge up until 5pm on the last working day before the course.

Related 2017 courses:

Getting started with Data Management

Principles of Visualising Data with R and ggplot