Week 13: Day 65-70 - VA Votes #6

Monday:
Today, I spent all of class working with Owen on the VA Votes project. It's part of his senior experience, so we're gonna be working on this a lot more now. He showed me the script that he made in Python, and how it would take data from the CSV data files and convert them into stuff that can be transferred into tables automatically. It was interesting stuff, and I understood thanks to the way he explained it.

Tuesday:
N/A --- Senior Project Presentation

Wednesday:
Today, I provided Owen with information on how I designed my database. Next, I taught him about how to implement primary keys and foreign keys. Afterwards, he taught me some things about querying which I didn't know before. Then I went back and started playing around with a test database to figure apply what I learned earlier to something.

Thursday:
N/A --- SDV 100 w/ Ms. Magro

Friday:
Today, I helped Owen with his walkthrough guide, which documents our steps for the VA Votes project. He asked me some questions that he has been wanting to ask me since SOL week. When we reached PostGIS stuff, Mr. Elkner told me not to worry about it since it was something we haven't been able to reach yet.

Week 12: Day 55-59 - Continuing SQL

Monday:
I spent most of today in Ms. Magro's class, logging into my nova account and getting to blackboard through myNova. She asked us to do an assignment as well, just as a taste of what was to come. After that, I came back down to the room. The rest of the class I just explored some SQL.

Tuesday:
Today, I re-installed pgAdmin III, an SQL manager for all platforms. The version I had before was not a version that worked with vavotes. It took me most of class to install this, since it was a long process. Afterwards, I connected to vavotes and it was successful. The rest of class I spent learning how to use this properly.

Wednesday:
Today, I spent time practicing my ability to create Entity Relationship Diagrams. It's these diagrams that help you model a database. There are three important terms to know about ER Diagrams. The entities, actions, and attributes. Entities is an object with which you want to store information. An action is the type of relationship between entities. Finally, attributes are characteristics of an entity.

Thursday:
N/A --- SDV 100 w/ Ms. Magro

Friday:
N/A --- Out Sick

Week 11: Day 50-54 - VA Votes #4

Monday:
Today, Mr. Elkner was not here. He told me that this guy who meets with on Thursdays was going to make a diagram for me and email it to me, so I could create a database for VA Votes. Unfortunately, I did not get any email. Instead, I spent the class sharpening my skills in Postgres by messing around with other commands, and learning about SQL in general through the w3schools Then course.

Tuesday:
Today, I started out by telling Mr. Elkner I didn't get an email from the guy. Apparently, the guy didn't show up to the last meeting, so now Mr. Elkner will email him. I helped Amanuel access his Windows directory from his bash shell, since it puts you into the Ubuntu directory instead.

Wednesday:
I had my AP English test today, so I'm exhausted. I started out by replying to the email chain with details on my database plan, and samples of the data so James can make an ER diagram if he wants. At this point I don't have much to do, so I'm trying to learn what I can about querying and postgres. I also tried to learn how to import CSV files into a table through Postgres.

Thursday:
N/A --- SDV 100 with Ms. Magro

Friday:
Today, Mr. Elkner told me that there was an ER diagram circulating within the project collaborators. I did not receive this, so he e-mailed the chain inquiring for the diagram so I could get started. In the mean time I continued my work from last class. This time, I found a very useful software. It's called PGAdmin III, and it allows me to access vavotes and edit the tables in an easy way.