Class Journal Week 6

Jake Woodlee

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I definitely have a better idea, because quite honestly, I really wasn't sure exactly how it was stored within databases. If pressed on it I could probably come up with some sort of organizational structure for each one - which I could most definitely not do before.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I think this analogy applies to companies that do more than just store data in a database. Amazon not only stores book data, but also sells books in a very efficient and convenient way. The latter part of amazon is more of what kills things, not the simple action of storing data. Databases have enabled a lot of new business models so in a sense they have done some killing, but I would say it is more indirect than anything.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • To be honest, I am not entirely sure. I would think that a programming language would be useful in "talking" with databases for much the same reasons they are useful today. They let you handle massive amounts of data much easier than doing anything manually. In this case, the data would be SQL commands or some sort of commands that let Java manipulate databases. So for example, you could automate the process that we did for this assignment and get it done a million times in less than a second. I think that would be pretty useful.

Jwoodlee (talk) 20:26, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Mahrad Saeedi

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Yes, it makes complete sense. How some of these, like Fitbit can create data, and, on the other hand, websites obtain their data from a database and convert them to fit the web page format. It's interesting to look over the issues with data management; more data equals more programming.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • The analogy only makes sense under certain circumstances. With building the bookstore database, it made book stores irrelevant because, using the database, you are able to create an "ultimate" online bookstore that caters more efficiently to all audiences. The pharmacy analogy doesn't hold true for me because drug databases can provide necessary information regarding drugs, their uses, and methods of administrating. No one person would be able to extract every ingredient for a drug in order to produce it and start a pharmacy; that just wouldn't happen.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • A programming language is necessary to do the talking because there needs to be one language that can be used across the various platforms such as Mac or Windows. This "universal language" in a sense makes programming much more versatile in its applications.

Msaeedi23 (talk) 23:40, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Anu Varshneya

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • After working with the FDA database, I feel that I may have a basic understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1 is stored because it provided insight as to how data is stored in tables and how information can be interconnected using keys/indexes. The FDA database also brought insight into how information could be categorized into different tables and interconnected using these keys/indexes. This is relevant to each of the programs that section 5.1 mentioned because each of those programs interconnects loads and loads of data and quickly accesses data from different tables, most likely using a key system. For example, Spotify provides information regarding songs, albums, artists, and more. It also provides information about other similar songs, other songs in the album, and other songs by the artist. When accessing this information, you are taking advantage of the interconnections of the data tables in each category where each category (song, album, artist) has its own table.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I think this analogy means that by creating a bookstore utilizing a database of books and customers, Amazon made physical book stores obsolete. By making a drug database, I don't think I built the death of pharmacies. However, I think that by creating a drug database, I have create the means by which someone could create a pharmacy that is the death of pharmacies. If pharmacies were purely used for information about drugs, the database created in this class could replace physical pharmacies. However, pharmacies are also where consumers can purchase drugs. This task is not something that is inherently part of our database, and therefore could not replace physical databases. If this task could be added as functionality (say, by having a database of consumers and doctors and prescriptions from doctors) then yes, we could technically build the death of pharmacies.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • It might be beneficial to have a programming language "talk to a database" in instances where a lot of data needed to be searched through and the results must constrain to several different requirements. In our assignment, we were narrowing down our data by only a handful of requirements and our database was relatively small. In the case that you have a large database and a lot of requirements that the results must fit into, having a programming language systematically interact with the database is much more efficient. For example, writing a SQL command every time I want to find a web page on Google sounds terrible. I'd much rather type in some key words in the box on the screen and let the code behind the scenes systematically sift through the terms that I entered and produce a search query to search through Google's infinitely large database.

--Anuvarsh (talk) 14:46, 12 October 2015 (PDT)

Kristin Zebrowski

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • The FDA database assignment definitely gave me a clearer idea of how data in Section 5.1 is stored. Databases aren't really something I think about when I'm listening to music on Spotify or looking at Twitter, but I imagine that the information is handled in a very similar way as to what is done on the FDA tables. It's intriguing to imagine all of the music files on Spotify laid out in a table like the one we worked with, but it makes a lot of sense and is simultaneously very overwhelming because of how much data exists out there! The FDA database, furthermore, showed me how important it is to be so meticulously organized when it comes to these big data projects and it makes me have a lot of respect for those who organize and update databases.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I don't exactly agree with the analogy. First of all, the means behind building a drug database and Amazon are completely different. Amazon, on one hand, is not only for organizational purposes but for buying and selling--it's a business, and the organization of the database is for convenience of the consumer. In that way, Amazon built the death of a bookstore because it's more convenient and the ordinary person can use it for a variety of reasons. In contrast, the FDA database is available for public record and for information or to check data. Second of all, I see Amazon is more of a tool, while the FDA database is more of a resource. On Amazon, you can search for specific items, pay for them via the database, and then have those things delivered to you--you hardly have to lift a finger. While an online bookstore and a drug database are both large and very specifically organized databases full of useful things, until the pharmacy takes the place of a pharmacist's job and can fill prescriptions and give them to you, I don't see building a drug database as the death of pharmacies.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • I think a programming language acts like a translator of sorts, making it much, much easier to "communicate" with the database and manipulate or search through the different items in the database. I can talk to a database but it takes a very long time to understand and execute. A programming language is needed to make these processes much easier; otherwise we would spend half of our time with databases just trying to figure out how to find what we need, let alone actually finding it.

Kzebrows (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2015 (PDT)

Brandon Klein

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Working with the FDA database directly imparted a sense of how databases are structured and look when stored on a computer. Drawing upon this new knowledge, I can much more clearly imagine how companies that rely on digital data such as Spotify, Fitbit, and Twitter have their data structured on a computer. Although these companies all collect data in unique ways, the masses of data they acquire are more than likely funneled into large relational databases using code similar to how we imported the Drugs@FDA data into our own database. The primary difference would simply be in scale. As opposed to cleaning up one file and creating two tables, these companies are likely to constantly be importing large quantities of data and sorting them into accordingly large relational databases with many connected tables. This is the fashion that these companies' data likely sits on their computers.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I do not believe this analogy applies to the creation of our drug database. In the case of Amazon, they built an online bookstore that offered ways to purchase either digital or physical copies of books that were previously only attainable at bookstores. Thus, they offered more flexible access to a slightly more versatile version of the same old product. Although Amazon could never directly replace the same kinds of emotion one gets when walking into a quaint bookstore, the ease of access they offered through the internet allowed them to take over the market. Although bookstores still exist and thrive for the unique experience they offer, building an online bookstore (Amazon) absolutely initiated the decline of bookstores. However, this case is fundamentally different from the FDA case. When building the drug database, we did not introduce an online version of the same product (access to prescription medications) that makes pharmacies invaluable. Instead, we simply built a way to access new drug information. Data regarding a drug is entirely different from the drug itself. Thus, we have not engineered the death of pharmacies, as our database in no way directly competes with them. All in all, I do believe this analogy is a good one though. Perhaps a better example would have been with building an online television/movie database (Netflix) serving as the death of DVD stores. I certainly remember all of the Blockbuster DVD stores I used to go to as a child going out of business because of this along with similar streaming technologies. In a similar fashion, offering products/services online certainly offers an ease of access that threatens to put stores that traditionally offered these products/services out of business. In the age of technology and urbanization that often renders cities nearly incommutable (like our beloved Los Angeles), anything that can replace a common time consuming drive with a few clicks on a screen seems almost fated to outcompete the former. We're even starting to see online grocery services thriving. It's certainly a slippery slope. Perhaps in a few years the analogy well be less of a joke and more of a reality.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • Although we "talked" to a database in this assignment, having a programming language adds a great deal of utility to interfacing with databases. In pgAdminIII, we could interact only with the database in isolation. However, when we interact with databases via a programming language such as Java, we bring the rest of the programming tools we have into the picture as well. Particularly, the interactions with a database might be more valuable when pipped into sequences of commands that could manipulate the data extracted into the database or easy the process of importing data into the database. For example, if we were given a way to talk to the database on the command line with UNIX, we could have directly imported the edited text file and then proceeded to manipulate the database all in one place. In addition to this, I get the impression that a good programming language would simplify the way in which the user interacts with the database. With a good standards library and existing code, perhaps simpler commands would be available to perform common database manipulations.

-- Bklein7 (talk) 11:25, 12 October 2015 (PDT)

Emily Simso

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Working it the FDA database helped me visualize what data looks like when stored. Before doing this assignment, I didn't really have a concept of how a database might be structured, but after working so closely with the data, I can see how various other companies might use this formatting. It also made me appreciate how much data can be stored on a computer, especially with so many different functions and applications
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I like the analogy as it applies to Amazon, which provided a much more convenient way to purchase things, such as books. I don't think that this analogy applies to everything. While it is true for many services, there are some things, like pharmacies, which still need some human interaction. It seems inevitable that many services will become obsolete due to computers, but certain industries (such as drugs) require more human intuition than simply purchasing a book, for example (I hope).
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • I think a programming language helps simplify the process, especially if the data is in an unknown format or if you want to perform an action on the data regularly. Using an intermediate program allows the user to perform more functions, as well, making it easier and more efficient to manipulate the data. Programming languages are just another way to use a computer to perform a human activity more methodically and quickly.

Emilysimso (talk) 14:04, 12 October 2015 (PDT)

Josh Kuroda

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Now that I have seen and worked with the back-end of databases, I feel like working with the gigantic stores of something like Spotify could be intimidating, especially because of the ramifications of making a mistake in those cases. With this being said, I also feel like database software and code makes apps like those possible, because of the sheer number of inputs when dealing with something as large as social media or music.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • In this case, I think I have just created a database that is widely used by many physical pharmacies, so I don't believe I have "built the death of pharmacies." Although I do think that a bookstore database destroys part of the appeal that physical bookstores offer, where one can stumble upon a book that she otherwise would not have found.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • Like he said in the article, Java runs on a virtual machine and has thousands of libraries at its disposal, which is very useful when trying to make a new program, or in this case, a database. Implementing a database using Java is not only convenient, but stable and consistent, so that database users can feel safe when "talking" to their database.

-- Jkuroda (talk) 14:37, 12 October 2015 (PDT)

Veronica Pacheco

Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?

I feel that I definitely have a better understanding of how the data in, for example, Spotify might look when stored on a computer. The text files we got from the FDA website were larger than what we have been working with normally however it wasn't so larger that scrolling through the file was such a tedious task. When the article mentioned that Spotify gets it data from music files from the record company, I could only imagine how big those files are and how handy it is to write the sed command to easily have all that data go into SQL. I find myself always being impressed or left in awe every assignment because in a large scale it's so efficient and it has a huge impact on how everything works.

Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?

I don't think we built the death of pharmacies but perhaps we built a database for more efficient pharmacies. I think the analogy is true on some level but you will always have those people who have all the information but would still like to have the person-to-person experience or even have someone else explain the information about the drug to them. I think that works with not only the bookstore but with anything. Some people would still prefer to buy an album at Best Buy than listen to it for free on Spotify.

Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking? I think that the programming language is written for the efficient for the computer. For example, in SQL when it reads create table it knows exactly what you want it to do. That's why I feel that for me it could be a challenge to wrap my head around the different languages. I think I am just accustomed to be more wordy or descriptive to try to explain one thing but for the computer languages there are specific actions and characters that have specific meaning.

Vpachec3 (talk) 16:53, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Kevin Wyllie

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Yes, and no. While this assignment gave me insight into how data is processed into a more presentable, user-accessible form, some part of me doubts that an intern at Spotify is manually copy/paste-ing information between programming interfaces. The sheer volume of data trafficked through Spotify and Twitter must call for an even more automated process. Again, formatting is a huge issue here, so I would assume that these hugely-popular services have a way of standardizing how data is entered in the first place (a user posting a tweet, or a producer inputting a music file) so as to minimize the amount of human involvement required. The first thing that comes to mind are the fields you fill out when you create a new account on a website. Each is a separate entry, and some even restrict which types of characters you can use. I'd imagine this is an easy way to automate data entry; instead of presenting the data to a human who must categorize and process different pieces of information, the user enters information into separate areas which are probably designated to organized in a way that maximizes the efficiency of the system.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I think the analogy does not apply to a pharmacy at all, because pharmacies provide a physical product, instead of a virtual product, as is the case for (even physical) books. The utility of a book comes almost entirely from the data it stores (obviously excluding things like childrens’ pop-up books). So, all or most of a book’s worth stays in tact when that book is converted to a digital format. But while you can download an ebook, you can’t treat strep-throat with (solely) data.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • As I mentioned, maybe some sort of intermediate programming language could be used to automate the process of data entry itself. As Dondi mentioned in class, a million entries is the point at which a database is considered to be moderately sized, and the files we worked with didn’t even come close to that size. At such large volume of data, I’d imagine that the protocol for this assignment would run into several issues.

Kwyllie (talk) 15:17, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Lena Olufson

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I feel as though I for sure have a better understanding of how the data from Spotify or Twitter may appear when being stored on a computer. This exercise with the FDA data allowed me to see how files look in their data format when they are being moved and manipulated around on a computer. I can only imagine how large the files are that these various companies have to sort and deal with since the FDA drug files were only a fraction of the size of, say, numerous music files that Spotify has to collect and sort into a database. It is definitely a great help to use sed and the other commands to work with the files when creating and using a database in order to get the work done efficiently.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I think that this analogy works a little bit better for the bookstore than the pharmacies because it is more applicable currently. I have noticed recently in both NorCal and SoCal, that bookstores have been running out of business for many years now as the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and other electronic reading devices have developed. People no longer go to bookstores to find hard copies of books because they are now accessible and available for purchase online. By building an electronic bookstore open to the public, the death of real bookstores that are located in buildings is triggered. When using this analogy for pharmacies, it does make sense that by allowing all of the drugs to be accessible and researched through a database, the need for paper handouts and meetings with pharmacists may decrease. However, I think that pharmacies are different from bookstores in the sense that you must be prescribed drugs by someone and the drugs need to exist as physical matters otherwise the patients wouldn’t be able to consume the drugs. Pharmacies will always be needed in this sense since the drugs must be stored and organized somewhere where they can still exist as physical matter for humans to consume.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • I think that a program language helps tremendously with the talking to a database because it allows there to be direct communication between the language and the database. If the data is in a confusing or unfamiliar format, then the language can help you make the commands and manipulations you desire to perform. The language makes it much easier to work with the data in a database as well as much more efficient since it would be very difficult for a user to try to “talk” with a database without using a common language.

Lenaolufson (talk) 17:32, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Mary Alverson

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • Yes. I can see how .txt files are extremely helpful because they can hold data that is easily transferred into databases. The data can be of different types and can be linked across tables, like how our databases were once we created them. The format is especially helpful because many times, such as in the case of Spotify and IRS tax returns, the information comes from a different source than who analyzes or makes use of the data. The way that we made the FDA database gives me a very good understanding of how data can be transferred in large quantities all at once, and still analyzed fairly quickly.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I assume that the half-joke is a reference to Amazon. Admittedly, I buy a lot of books off of amazon, especially because it is faster to search for a book with keywords then by walking up and down the aisles of a bookstore I had to drive to in a car that I don’t even own. Book databases definitely fill the needs of the people, no matter the destruction of traditional bookstores that online bookstores leave in their paths. I do not think that our drug database replaces pharmacies because most people go to pharmacies nowadays already knowing what drug they need, since it was likely prescribed to them by their doctor, and can pick it up conveniently from a neighborhood pharmacy. The death of pharmacies is especially unlikely from our database because our database does not have an option to ship the drugs themselves to the customers. Therefore the convenience of the drug database is fairly little.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • Although we “talked” to a database for this assignment, the “talking” took me awhile (like, hours). If I had to repeat this assignment with slightly different data it would most likely take me more hours. If a programming language did the “talking”, I could write a program once and that program could “talk” to the database as many times as it needed with all the data that was called for and I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I think this is why some people say that a key part of being a computer scientist is being lazy…I think that a more positive way to put it would be to say that we like to be efficient. Why spend hours on data entry when a computer program could do it in seconds? Or less than seconds?

--Malverso (talk) 21:18, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Nicole Anguiano

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I do believe I have a better understanding of how the data may be stored; however, in the case of Twitter, Fitbit, and Spotify, I think that there is still a very significant amount that remains a mystery. These databases are large, ever changing, and constantly growing, and are being accessed by (in the case of Twitter and Spotify) thousands of users a day. The sheer magnitude and complexity behind the databases (which are often composed of many databases of many different types) can't be captured by the FDA drug database.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I do not believe that we have built the death of pharmacies - at least not yet. Currently, pharmacies are still in active use. The need for a pharmacist to explain the dosage and usage instructions of a drug is still very strong, and I do not see that changing anytime soon. Additionally, the drugs given out at pharmacies need to be prescribed by a doctor; it isn't like bookstores where anyone could buy any book, and any person can find the book they want to buy online. Even the online orders for prescription drugs still go through a pharmacy for processing. In the immediate future, the need for pharmacies will still be strong.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • Having learned some of the mathematics behind what is going on with queries like the ones we performed in this assignment, it is extremely helpful to use a programming language to talk to the database. Programming languages provide a level of abstraction - they turn the 'computer stuff" from complicated gibberish into "english". Just like a person could write a program entirely in assembly, it's significantly easier, faster, and less frustrating to program the same program in Java or Javascript.

Trixie Roque

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I definitely feel like I have a better understanding of how data is stored in a computer. Although I have taken classes which gave me an idea of how data is stored in memory, this is actually the first time, I’ve seen it visually. When I took my computer systems class, I learned about how memory is stored in registers and how to move that data around, but I never actually saw what that would look like (although it was pretty obvious from what my professor would draw in our class that memory storage systems can be visualized as a table).
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I don’t think that we’ve built the death of pharmacies since there is still a need for human interaction between the buyer and the person behind the register. People can’t just buy whatever medicine they want because they have to be prescribed by a doctor. I think the analogy, though, is fairly good in terms of how technology continues to revolutionize our lives that we can probably do most things in the future at home lying on the couch. However, there is a long process in between actually designing the application (in this case, an application that will perhaps one day bring about the death of pharmacies) and realizing it.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • A programming language can easily automate specific actions that a human being takes ages to accomplish. Programming languages are built to do repetitive tasks and this “talking to a database” can probably be done in a matter of lines of code from a specific language instead of copying and pasting several similar lines.

--- Troque (talk) 22:37, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Erich Yanoschik

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I have a greater understanding of how databases are stored and utilized by SQL and other programs. After using different tables within our own database, I could see the intricacies involved in cross database interactions. This could prove very fruitful providing products like Spotify and Twitter. Without the tools to search and pick out certain aspects these databases would just be large piles of information.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I somewhat agree with the analogy, that they did build the death of bookstores but it was much more than that. They built a more efficient and evolved bookstore, if the original version was unable to adapt then it was doomed to fail from the beginning, there is only survival of the fittest in the market today. I don't believe this transitions over to pharmacies, a book can be downloaded and information pulled from the screen. With drugs you can download their information but can't 3-D print or ingest them over the computer. You have to visit a pharmacy and recieve a doctors note, now if you had a database of forged doctors notes for every drug that would be different, you could print it out and go to your local drug store and have a free for all. That would not be so good, but the pharmacies would still make some money and persist.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • For starters programming languages are an intermediary between the user and the computer. I don't know binary and the computer doesn't know English. Programming languages add to the efficiency of whatever action or process is taking place, without these languages simple actions would take forever and nothing would get accomplished.

--Eyanosch (talk) 23:08, 14 October 2015 (PDT)

Brandon Litvak

1. Based on what you have seen of the FDA database, do you feel that you have a better understanding of how the data mentioned in section 5.1—Spotify music, Fitbit exercise tracking, Twitter tweets, IRS tax returns, etc.—might look when stored on a computer?
   • I think that the exercise with the FDA drug database helped give me a sense of how a set of “raw” data might look like before it is processed and incorporated into a database but the appearance of the data in the examples given in section 5.1, I feel, still remains to me a mystery; this data seems like it would look fairly different from what was seen in this week’s assignment, given the big differences between the given databases and the FDA one. Spotify information, and Twitter, especially, seem like examples of massive databases that involve a lot of constant CRUD operations; the FDA database and its data, in comparison, seems to be a lot simpler than these other databases.
2. Section 5.2 half-jokingly says that, by building a bookstore, you actually built the death of bookstores. You just built a drug database—have you actually built the death of pharmacies? What do you think of this analogy?
   • I think that the drug database that we built is still extremely far from being a pharmacy-killer. Unlike pharmacies, the database that we built does not provide any services to people and, thus, it will not be able to act as a viable replacement (it’s kind of static). At the moment, this database just feels like an excellent organization of raw data that can be utilized for different queries. I think that the analogy (Amazon) proposed by the author is an apt one because databases can be exploited and used (and certainly have been) in ways that can lead to services that are simply far better and more efficient than whatever that had come before them.
3. Section 5.3 says that the Java language can “talk to a database.” But you just “talked” to a database in this assignment. Why do you think you would need a programming language to do the talking?
   • I think that a programming language would add several layers and give options that could make the “talking” easier and more efficient than what was done in this exercise. Languages like Java also seem like they would be extremely useful, if not necessary, in the maintenance of large-scale databases that are constantly being updated and changed. Programming languages seem like a necessity for larger sets of data (massive-scale) because they can permit an efficient automation of processes and an easier kind of "communication" with a database, which can streamline processes that can otherwise take an exorbitant amount of time or resources.

Blitvak (talk) 23:24, 14 October 2015 (PDT)