PLEASE DO NOT REGISTER FOR THIS EVENT IF YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF ATTENDING.

Although places are free to students, the Q-Step Centre incurs substantial costs for these events which cannot be refunded in the event that registered students do not turn up on the day. Please make every effort to inform us in advance of the event if you are unable to attend or you can cancel your place directly on Eventbrite.

The Warwick Q-Step Centre is delighted to host this Masterclass on Structured Query Language (SQL), delivered by Dr James Tripp, Senior Academic Technologist at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM).

This Masterclass is aimed primarily at postgraduate students on our 3 Quantitative Social Science degrees. Final year Q-Step undergraduate students, interested in learning enhancement opportunities, are also invited to attend. Depending on numbers we may be able to open the event up to PG students in other relevant subject areas throughout the University.

Structured Query Language (SQL)

Data drives our modern world. Applications running on the web, our mobile phones or within institutions all require efficient structured access to data. Database programs are a solution to this problem by structuring data using relations. The language used to query and issue commands to relational databases is called Structured Query Language (SQL).

Why should one learn SQL? Our interaction with data is mediated by SQL and the representation of data as relational tables. Understanding basic SQL allows one to appreciate these limitations and get a better sense of what is happening ‘under the hood’. An understanding of SQL may help you in employment as data scientists, software developers and administrators (via Microsoft Access) often use SQL and databases in their daily work.

This Masterclass is a hands on introduction to SQL. We consider the nature of a relational database and how to store or extract data from it. You will be connecting to a database and directly exploring the data using the command line interface. We will also extract the data using the R programming language and produce visualisations.

Software

All the software we will be using is freely available.

We will be connecting to the database using the command line. If you are on Windows 7 then please do install putty. Windows 10, MacOS and Linux have an SSH client already installed.

The R statistical computing language is required for this Masterclass. We will use R to connect to and extract data from a database. I recommend also installing the RStudio interface for R as it will make programming in R a little easier.

We will be connecting to a database running on University computer. Having the database program installed and running on your own computer is not required. However, you are welcome to install the PostgreSQL and PostGIS database software and instructions for setting up the database will be provided in the masterclass.

PLEASE NOTE: This event is for Warwick University students only. There is no option to attend parts of the Masterclass, you must be able to attend for the whole day.

Attendance is free and refreshments, including lunch, will be provided. Registration is required as places are strictly limited. So book your place now!

Further information about the Warwick Q-Step Masterclass Programme 2019/20 can be found on our website.