M359 - Thats Another Fine Book I've Got Myself Into

I recently bought another book to help with the M359 studying. This one is by Thomas Connolly and Carolyn Begg and takes a similary approach to database theory and design that the M359 Course Team have taken. A few differences - including the way the doing their E-R Diagrams (they use standard UML - no problem). Its quite a hefty book running in, as it does, at 1300+ pages but I am finding a usful adjunct to the course materials. I'm still refering to Chris Date's 'Database in Depth' that I mentioned in a previous post (which also has the benefit of being quite easy to carry around - unlike Connolly and Beggs paving-slab of a book).

M359 - TMA01 Result

Well, a bit disappointed with my result for TMA01 - just 75% - which is the lowest TMA mark I have ever received. But no matter - onwards and upwards - the key thing is to learn from it.

But the mad thing is that I lost most of the marks for stupid, piddling, little mistakes - like forgetting to name a relationship, even though I had correctly worked it out. I'm not complaining - I know its important to get these thing right, but if I could kick myself up the backside, I would (no, don't try and picture that). I also missed one of the attributes of a compound primary key - why? haven't the foggiest. It was all down in black and white in front of me (even my scribbled notes show that I did the work correctly) but when it came to typing up the TMA I just missed it out. Foolish me. And, worse still, missing out that attribute had a knock on effect on the remainder of the answers.

Oh well, at least I have a target for the next one that I know is beatable!

M359 - TMA01

Well, thats it. TMA 01 is submitted, for better or worse. I try and not submit TMA's until almost the last minute just in case something occurs to me (along the lines of: "So thats what the question meant! I'll have to redo all that bit"). But I found that for the last week or so I have just been fiddling and tinkering with it but not really making it any better. So the time has come to put it to rest and see what comes.

Never quite sure with a new course just how the marking is going to go, so all I hope at present is that I haven't fluffed it and have taken the correct approach and level in answering the questions. What I would like is to achieve above the 85% line (and generally, in previous courses, I do). But ...