ASNSM - Computer Science

[jch]

The Sophia Database course situation is kinda strange. It's supposed to be equivalent to Strayer's CIS111 Intro to Relational Database Management Systems. However, the content of the courses differs drastically. CIS111 at Strayer is a MS Access course that doesn't touch SQL at all. It teaches basic RDBMS concepts with the GUI. Meanwhile, the "equivalent" Sophia course dives directly into hardcore SQL. No Access or GUI content whatsoever. The material is also far more in-depth than in the Strayer course.
TESU takes the Sophia Database Course (or my Microsoft MTA) as ITS-130 Database Fundamentals, which precedes ITS-231 Database Programming. My Strayer CIS-111 credit came in as CIS-211 Database Management.
I actually signed up for the Sophia Database course to help with ITS-231. It's near or just below the TESU course material depth in most areas. The TESU course textbook wasn't working well for me, and I needed an alternative resource.
Overall, I wasn't thrilled with the Sophia Database offering. It's probably the lowest quality course they offer, with numerous mistakes, wrong answers, typos, and unhelpful hints. Also, the order of topics is often nonsensical. Why do they spend the first two chapters on SQL, then go back to basic database concepts? Much of the content should be reordered. Furthermore, don't be fooled by the lack of assignments - this course takes a lot of time. Guessing isn't feasible on many of the questions. Unlike other subjects, where you may have enough background knowledge to select likely answers, this course requires you to open a database and run queries to find the results.