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DBSnap-Eval: Identifying Database Query Construction Patterns

Published: 07 July 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Learning to construct database queries can be a challenging task because students need to learn the specific query language syntax as well as properly understand the effect of each query operator and how multiple operators interact in a query. While some previous studies have looked into the types of database query errors students make and how the availability of expected query results can help to increase the success rate, there is very little that is known regarding the patterns that emerge while students are constructing a query. To be able to look into the process of constructing a query, in this paper we introduce DBSnap-Eval, a tool that supports tree-based queries (similar to SQL query plans) and a block-based querying interface to help separate the syntax and semantics of a query. DBSnap-Eval closely monitors the actions students take to construct a query such as adding a dataset or connecting a dataset with an operator. This paper presents an initial set of results about database query construction patterns using DBSnap-Eval. Particularly, it reports identified patterns in the process students follow to answer common database queries.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ITiCSE '22: Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 1
July 2022
686 pages
ISBN:9781450392013
DOI:10.1145/3502718
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 07 July 2022

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Author Tags

  1. block-based system
  2. database queries
  3. database systems
  4. relational algebra
  5. sql

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