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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Using Databases with Python by University of Michigan

4.8
stars
21,177 ratings

About the Course

This course will introduce students to the basics of the Structured Query Language (SQL) as well as basic database design for storing data as part of a multi-step data gathering, analysis, and processing effort. The course will use SQLite3 as its database. We will also build web crawlers and multi-step data gathering and visualization processes. We will use the D3.js library to do basic data visualization. This course will cover Chapters 14-15 of the book “Python for Everybody”. To succeed in this course, you should be familiar with the material covered in Chapters 1-13 of the textbook and the first three courses in this specialization. This course covers Python 3....
Highlights
High quality course material

(143 Reviews)

Top rated instructor

(176 Reviews)

Top reviews

MM

Mar 12, 2018

The course is great... You can definitely learn many things... Was kind of hard for me and i went many times back and forth through most of the lectures... However i think i learn many new things....

JG

Jun 16, 2016

This course was great! I enjoyed parsing different types of data: from documents and the web. This course is definitely (rudimentary) a must take course for anyone who wants to go into data science.

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2576 - 2600 of 3,196 Reviews for Using Databases with Python

By Carlos G

May 3, 2017

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By Sultan M

Mar 22, 2017

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By Georgios F

Nov 24, 2016

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By Đoàn N T H

Oct 1, 2016

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By Paul J M

Mar 14, 2016

As with the third course in the specialization, the lectures give just enough to allow students to independently advance their learning outside the course. To be honest, I think the instructor covers too much ground in too short a time for most students to gain a lot of understanding. Furthermore, the assignments are quite straightforward requiring minimal adaptation of the supplied code.

The module on Object Orientated Programming is, frankly, a waste to time and a distraction. There are no practical exercises and the material is run through at a pace that makes it unlikely that anyone without prior knowledge would make any sense of it. What is more, there is no reference to, or use of, OOP at any other point in the course or specialization. The time would have been better spent in expanding the modules on the core topics of using databases with Python.

On the positive side, the external tools on Dr Chuck's own website seem to work as expected and integrate smoothly with Coursera. The forums also remain supportive, although, as with most courses, far less active than on the old platform.

I still rate this as a 4 star (albeit a 4-) as Dr Chuck is such an engaging instructor and there is still a good progression through the specialization. I would be more cautious if taking this as a standalone course.

By Richard I C

Jul 31, 2016

I liked the course. As with the previous three courses, Dr. Severance does a great job presenting the material and explaining how the code works. I felt that the assignments and the book were lacking a little bit:

1. The textbook needs to be updated to include the Object Oriented Programming section that is covered in Week 1.

2. There is no programming exercise for the OOP section, just a quiz.

3. There are no assignments in the textbook for Chapters 14 and 15. The examples of the code and how it works is awesome, though, which is a trade off of sorts.

4. The Chapter 14 programming assignments only require minimal programming in Python and/or SQL. I would have liked to do a little more programming.

5. Chapter 15 felt like it was shoved in at the end, and the assignment was really easy. I was hoping for a little more rigor on that one, also.

Overall, it was a good experience and I'm looking forward to finishing up this specialization when the Capstone is unlocked and becomes available.

By Paul B

Sep 22, 2018

4 of 5 in the series of Python for Everybody. You do not learn as much Pythin in this course, but apply it to scanning the web and gathering data. I am more for the scientific uses of Python and programming from scratch than what was taught in the course. Now I must write than many students enjoyed the course and learned something new. I took the first 3 in the series (btw it is recommend that you take the first 3 course before taking this particular one. Several of the HW forces you to use that prior knowledge. So don't rush through), and was able to walk away from those courses feeling a lot more comfortable with Python. This course not so much. But hey, in this course you see how Python can be applied and if you're into Data science it is a good introduction. I am stopping here and moving on to other coursera course. Not caring to do the capstone in this series. Regards.

By Francisco S C C

Oct 6, 2020

Unfortunately, I'll have to rate this course 4 stars out of 5... The begining of this course was pretty boring, and that was fatal to grasp the attention of a lot of students, and the end was just way too easy for a course which is suppose to take concepts previously learned and apply them to the week. Literally to have 100% in the last assignment you only need to take some screenshots and that's it!!!

However, most of the course is incredibly good! It explains with excelence what SQL is, and how can we operate on databases with Python! The teacher s incredibly good and most of the assignments are great to practice was we have learned.

Therefore, I would sugest anyone doing the specialization to take this course, even though it will clearly see a difference in quality with the previous ones, because it will always be a good course with an excelent teacher behind it!

By Mathias D

Aug 22, 2021

This course was a good overview of SQL and interfacing with SQL using Python. My biggest issue is that the assignments were far too straightforward. Although it is prefaced by Dr. Chuck that this course is designed to be a starting point for learning SQL - which it does a very good job - I think that increasing the difficulty of the assignments will help reinforce the topics covered. Although I easily completed all of the assignments, most of the work was pre-written code from the instructor that required trivial tweaking. Cannot fault Dr. Chucks enthusiasm for the topic, however, which was great and infectious...I will certainly be looking more into SQL in the future.

By mrinmoy g

Apr 21, 2017

I think Chuck is easily one of the best instructors I have studied under and like the previous courses, he has been really good in this course as well; however, I think in the Week 5 lectures, he could have spent a bit more time to explain all the different concepts he has used/introduced in his programs, some of which he had explained previously but some of them are surely not covered before example the use codecs.open and when to use that and so on..there are other examples as well. Overall, the course is very well taught although the last assignment was just too easy and does not really test the knowledge and understanding of the subject.

By Mark M

Jul 27, 2017

I really like the intro accessing the web with two common API's namely Google location API and twitter API. But this course is falling a little bit short when introducing the relational database model as persistence technology only. Instead of providing an introduction in a SQL as special language I really would expect a comparison of different persistence approaches such as popular NoSQL vs standard relational model. However if accepting the focus on the relational model of this course, then I would expect some intro into OR mapping with SQL alchemy. After all regarding persistence part the course is not well balanced.

By Roberto Z

Jan 23, 2016

This is an extremely high level introduction to SQL and how to use DBs in data processing programs.

If you have no experience you will get a feeling and some basic idioms to apply, so it is a good start.

If, like me, you already have a good SQL knowledge but little Python knowledge you can quickly learn how to access DBs and just go through the videos to have an easy overview of interesting applications.

As in previous courses I appreciated Dr. Chuck relaxed exposition and some of his interviews with people I just had their names on my books, like Tannembaum.

By Rahul D

Nov 7, 2018

Good course that introduces you to the very 101 of 101 basics of DB design, as well as the related libraries in Python. The assignments should be more rigorous and require more coding from a blank slate. Hence, I'd highly recommend that students take the time to reverse engineer, as well as read through and comment out the supplied code. Furthermore, there's an issue with the database design in one of the assignments that I point out in my code comments on github: https://github.com/rahulthewaffle/python_databases_severance/blob/master/week3/ex15-2.py

By Aarya P

Sep 9, 2020

Helps you learn how to deal with database in python . SQLite is also taught and how to see into database.

How python programming can help you get the data using an API. How you can extract and clean data using

python. Not really for the beginners but the course was tried to make simple. The professor is awesome

i could say that. You do need help from outside for some of the topics like what is SQL? But a brief

about such topics is given too . Nice instructor and nice lectures too. A little tougher course and not for absolute beginner

By Thomas H

Aug 11, 2019

The introduction of databases and integration with Python introduces a real-world application to this programming introduction. The content was informative, practical, and I will rely heavily on this course's content in the future. I did, however, find this course directed students more toward relying on existing code and tweaking it rather than thinking through the process and developing it from scratch. For this reason, I found this course to be a little weaker on delivery than the previous ones in the specialization.

By Jason A

Oct 27, 2017

Great coverage of the material, however some of the sample scripts were nearly complete and required little, if any, modification to complete the assignments. They clearly tried to find the balance between providing challenging exercises and providing working packages of scripts so that students can accomplish more complicated tasks using additional tools that are, on their own, beyond the scope of the project. I just think they could have provided a bit less to make some of the later exercises a bit more challenging.

By Jonpaul W

Mar 2, 2016

Good initial overview to the topic. Most code is actually provided to the student, preventing deeper learning via trial & error. However, it is a tradeoff of making the course accessible to a large number of students versus being too challenging and preventing newcomers from enjoying the subject. Dr. Severance is excellent -- entertaining and clearly very knowledgable. For any novice programmers looking to understand how Python interacts with databases, this is the best place to start.

By Marin T

Mar 25, 2021

Nice general introduction to SQL. Useful examples with Google and Twitter APIs. Too bad they are getting harder to use due to limitations.

Might be worth considering using other API resources, perhapse closer to Open Source, like OSM's Nominatim or OpenWeatherMap instead

Some of the graded tasks are perhaps too assisted - with most of the code written and shared. The fact that actual Python code doesn't need to be shared doesn't encourage me to write in clean and well-commented manner

By William D

May 10, 2016

Short, but jam packed with stuff you need to know in order to get working with Databases. The ending lesson was a little disappointing as we weren't tested on how to do some of the suggested projects that the teacher was talking about and instead only had to download and run a program on our computer. However, this class equips you with the knowledge to get a start in Data Science and Database engineering, as well as good practice and better understanding of how to use Python.

By Jayven C

Jan 25, 2016

Dr. Chuck once again breaks down very complex subject matter into easily digestible chunks for us newbies. My only issue with this course is that the hardest parts of the assignments were already done and all that was required from us was some slight tweaking in existing code. That may or may not be intended and the real challenge lies with the Capstone Project.

Nonetheless, if you are curious about how databases work, there's lots to learn here. I know I did!

By Michael D

Mar 15, 2019

This course is great as a very high level - quick intro to relational data modeling and SQL. I would have like to have spent some more time in practice with writing to and reading from databases via Python as the jump from executing a script in SQLite/ database manager to creating a cursor and executing formatted scripts and fetching the results is a little wide.

As always, great materials, but could have done better with more practice.

By Udbhav J

Sep 16, 2017

Decent course but some of the assignments required a lot of initiative to go and search the web in order to fully understand them. Material is understandable and very clearly presented allowing for a natural progression from the previous courses in this specialization. I am glad that I understand more about how Python works although I am not sure I am confident enough to apply some of the higher order skills taught in this course.

By Justin G

Feb 15, 2016

The course is great in that I felt I gained alot of insight into how data mining is done but I don't feel I gained much skill in using databases with python. The assignments are making minuscule modifications to existing code. I think it would have been a better exercise to either write a new program for each assignment or have the student build out a single program throughout the course. But, as always, Dr. Chuck is the best.

By Bharat P

Aug 29, 2020

A great course. I loved reviewing the worked examples and working on the assignments. I understand that this course gave a taste of what is possible with databases and Python. I understand that. I suggest having more involved extra-credit assignments. For my part, I shall take some of Dr. Chuck's samples and line-by-line attempt to reproduce (or reverse-engineering his results) and to really grasp his nifty syntax.

By Joseph D

Aug 24, 2021

The concepts presented in this course were helpful in learning how python can be used to structure and architect databases. I would have like more exercises that required me to generate my own code. There is a large component of downloading and running code that is already written with very little editing and generally no debugging. I felt that the course was a little too easy towards the end because of that.