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YASQLT – Yet Another SQL Tutor

A Pragmatic Approach

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9975))

Abstract

The paper describes an ongoing project of creating an automated assessment tool to help novice students learning SQL in a frame of an introductory database course. In difference to other tools of this kind, the project has chosen a pragmatic approach of focusing on catching common semantic errors, leaving syntax control to professional DBMS. Using agile system development, the project successfully completed two iterations, both of which were tested in practice with satisfactory results. The students appreciated the tool and would like to have similar tools for other subjects, including Relational Algebra, and Conceptual Modeling. The latter is planned for implementation in the near future. The tool is considered to be appropriate for Learning by Failure in the situation of large size classes and short courses.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    An example of using general semantic analysis is presented in [3].

  2. 2.

    The full list of errors to be caught by the tool is not presented due to the size limitation.

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to all members of the DSV database teaching team: M. Bergholtz, N. Dimitrakas, J. Snygg, A. Thelemyr and W. Westmoreland for their engagement in the project. The authors are grateful to our prefect U. Fors for allocating resources to the project. We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments have helped to improve the text.

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Correspondence to Ilia Bider .

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG

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Bider, I., Rogers, D. (2016). YASQLT – Yet Another SQL Tutor. In: Link, S., Trujillo, J. (eds) Advances in Conceptual Modeling. ER 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9975. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47717-6_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47717-6_17

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47716-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47717-6

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