What skills and resources do you need?¶

raccoon database

What skills do you need in order to design your own database?¶

Database design is a skill that you will never learn completely. The more you learn about this work, the more you realize you don't know! That's OK, there's a lot you can get done with relatively minimal knowledge and experience.

The basic skills you need include:

the ability to read instructions
the ability to type in English and the other language(s) you plan to work with on a computer.
the ability to analyze problems and try different solutions

Tip

If you need to set up a special keyboard for one or more languages we've found Keyman Developer to be pretty easy to use, along with the Keyman Application for distribution and use of your keyboard. Keyman may already have a keyboard for your language that you could plug-and-play. Note that this is an SIL product, though.

You are no-doubt well qualified to start this process!

Content Knowledge¶

The most important thing you need to understand in order to design and implement a good database is actually the content - the information - that you want to store and access. This is why so many database applications designed by other people (especially engineers who know nothing about human languages) can be so hard to use for language work.

If you are a language worker, you are a content area expert - and that uniquely qualifies you to be able to be effective in database design for your language, and your projects.

Computer Knowledge¶

You don't need to know much about computers, to get started - although gaining expertise in computers will certainly not hurt your ability to do this work!

You will need to know about files and directories (you may think of directories as folders on your computer, and if you think of them that way, you won't be wrong). You'll need to be able to navigate on your computer so that you can find out where your files are, and what the system of folders is like.

It's also important to understand that computers take you absolutely literally, and they do exactly what you tell them to do. This makes them very frustrating for us humans to work with, but it does help us to learn about how frequently we use our human languages in ways that are inconsistent with their literal meanings!

(Optional, but cool) You might want to learn a little bit at least about working on a computer at the command line - that means by using your 'terminal' or 'powershell' application to type in commands rather than pointing at and clicking on things with your mouse.

Courage and Persistence¶

You will not break your computer, or anything else, when you're learning to design and build databases - even if you make the worst possible mistakes! Having the courage to try things, and get errors, and get scared because oh no what if you broke it or lost your data, and then to persiste long enough to recover and realize that nothing got lost, and everything's OK, is critical.

If you follow our lessons and tutorials, we'll always emphasize ways to keep your computer and your data safe.

If you're like us, you will also make lots of scary looking mistakes. You'll get frustrated and maybe want to say bad, terrible, words.

That's OK - it's all part of the learning process! The only way it's not going to be worthwhile is if you give up before the problem is solved. We're here to help you solve it!

What resources do you need in order to do this work?¶

There are some things you need to have in order to do this work. They include a computer of some kind that you have administrative access to (that is, one on which you have permission to download and install software, change settings, and mess with in scary ways), a reasonably current operating system (software), and connectivity to the internet.

Hardware¶

Computers these days come in five basic flavors, three of which are well-suited to this kind of work:

Windows machines have LOTS of different manufacturers, but they all run the same kind of operating system. Well-known and reputable vendors of Windows machines include, but are not limited to Asus, IBM, Dell, Lenovo, HP, and similar. Windows machines are widely marketed to all kinds of computer users. These come in desktop or laptop models. Windows machines will work well for database design!
Macs are machines that run the Macintosh operating system, and they are produced by Apple Inc. Macs come in desktop or laptop models, and they are widely marketed to all kinds of computer users. Macs will work well for database design!
Linux machines are desktop or laptop computers that run Linux operating systems. If you don't already know about Linux machines, you probably don't have to care about them. They are marketed primarily to software engineers, computer scientists, data scientists, and to other weirdos who really like to know and control everything about how their computers work. Linux machines will work well for database design AND communicate to others that you have already earned MANY, many nerd points.

The following types of computers will probably not work well for database design.

Chromebooks. Chromebooks were created by Google, Inc. as an inexpensive type of laptop computer. They run on Google's own operating system. They work great for most things that most people want to do on a computer, but they were never really intended to support the hard/weird stuff like database design, etc.
Tablets and smartphones. Tablets (like the iPad) and smartphones run on either Apple's iOS operating system or else on the Android operating system. While there may be a time in the near future when you could do database design on a tablet or smartphone (heck, that time may be now for all I know), we are too old to know how to even begin to do that.

Software¶

The only really important kinds of software you will need for this project are your computer's operating system (duh - Windows, MacOS or Linux) and a web browser (We like Firefox or Chrome). Both should be as up-to-date as you can manage. For Windows we'd recommend 10 or higher, and either an education or professional edition if you can manage that (though home edition might be OK). For MacOS we recommend 13 Monterrey or better (though older versions might be fine). For Linux we know that you're using something you love and we know you understand things well enough to pick a version that'll work and that you're happy with.

Connectivity¶

You'll need to connect to the internet for the following jobs:

to download software such as DB Browser that we'll use together;
to search the World Wide Web for troubleshooting advice when some weird error pops up that you don't know how to fix (we recommend Stack Overflow at least until OpenAI buys and ruins it); and
to contact us by email and ask questions, get help or share progress!

Friends¶

It's always helpful to be able to share your questions, challenges and stories with others - and to help others out as well!

If you're in our CoLang workshop, you have friends who can help among your peers and facilitators! You might know other people who are good at this kind of thing, and who'd be willing to help coach you through the process. Those people might even include youngsters who are really familiar with computers and technology, and elders who are content area experts.

How'd we do?¶

Do you feel like you have a good idea of the skills and resources needed to do this work? If so, great! If not, you can contact John, Gus, or Amy and we'll do the best we can to help (see the 'friends' section above)!

At this point, you might go back to the index 🚀 or head over to the CoLang Workshop first steps 🚀