Database Education Needs Moderization

I just bombed my database course exam today. I am not gonna blame anyone else. It’s was because I didn’t properly study how to join multiple tables.

But it made me think during the exam: I really wish I could had the assistance to write SQL code from AI. It is certainly not allowed during exams, but I should had used it when I was learning it. Actually, it should be made available during the learning process. Combined with the fact that this class is taught using MAMP with MySQL version of 5.x.x while the textbook published in 2014 whose SQL examples are mostly of Oracle dialect……, I think the database education really needs some modernization. (Kinda a arbitrary opinion though, considering I haven’t researched how other colleges / universities teach database courses.)

Just raising the problem is not enough. I don’t want to be just another complainer. I will think about some ways (also existing ways) to modernize database education in my free time. Specifically I want the teaching to:

1. Be in line with latest popular SQL syntax
2. Have user-friendly way to install tools with AI assistant equipped with knowledge of the database
3. Maybe integrate sample projects and exercises from popular textbooks to “standardize” them all?

vanna-ai is a pretty cool project that combines AI with database knowledge. SQLAI seems to be a small German company which specializes in this area. I will start exploring these in my free time.