archaeo-db-workshop

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Description

Databases are crucial components of the archaeological toolbox that facilitate with the storage, organization and retrieval of information across a project. However, designing and implementing archaeological databases can be challenging due to the technical learning curve involved, the unique needs of archaeological projects, and lack of support or guidance.

This two-hour workshop will focus on fundamental aspects of database design, and teach participants how to construct information systems for various purposes. This is intended to be an active and participatory session. As an introductory overview, no prior knowledge or experience is expected.

Workshop Structure

1. About this workshop
2. What is a [relational] database?
3. Setting up a Database Management System

• Setting up and accessing a database server
• Command line basics
• SQL basics
• Activity: Create and access your database

4. Structuring the database

• Scoping and creating tables
• Activity: Scope and create tables
• Activity: Import data if you've got some
• Creating indexes and relationships
• Activity: Create indexes and relationships

5. Manipulating data

• INSERT, UPDATE, SELECT, DELETE and JOIN queries
• Activity: Practice data manipulation

6. Front-end development

• Demo: FLIRT

7. Wrap up

Learning Outcomes

• Understand what a database is, and how it relates to other aspects of an archaeological information infrastructure
• Understand how to design and maintain effective data structures
• Understand how to input, modify and retrieve data
• Create your own research database to suit your specific needs
• Become a profficient user of the command line and develop practical computing skills

Expectations

• Participants will bring their own laptop
• Participants are comfortable using a computer, with no assumptions about prior programming or networking knowledge
• Participants will be asked to share feedback so that further iterations may be improved

Facilitation Guidelines

• The workshop is led by a facilitator driving the session according to the structure presented above
• Use a shared notepad for:
  • Sharing notes and links
  • Sharing code snippets
  • Jargon-busting

Workshop Materials

Workshop materials are available in this GitHub repository, and rendered nicely at zackbatist.github.io/archaeo-db-workshop.

Helpful Resources

• University of Toronto Coders: Introduction to Bash
• W3Schools SQL Tutorial

Credits

Some aspects of this workshop, including the overall structure of this GitHub repository and some of its contents, are drawn from the material made available by Toronto Mesh for their P2P Internet Workshop. Gracious thanks to Dawn Walker [@dcwalk] for providing me with this, as well as other helpful resources.

Data Sources

Here are some sample datasets that may be useful for playing around with when developing test databases:

• DObsiSS - https://github.com/zackbatist/DObsiSS
• University of Toronto - https://github.com/cobalt-uoft/datasets or https://github.com/zackbatist/archaeo-db-workshop/tree/master/UofTData

Contact

• twitter: @mtl_zack
• github: zackbatist
• homepage: zackbatist.github.io

License

All workshop materials at github.com/zackbatist/archaeo-db-workshop/ are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, the text of which is included in the repository LICENSE file.