INF131 Data management foundations

The course delivers an introduction to foundational aspects of practice and theory in data management, with a focus both on relational databases and non-relational knowledge bases. Topics to be discussed include:

• Principles of good practice in data managment: FAIR principles, data and metadata quality, dealing with insufficiently annotated data.
• Relational databases: SQL (structured query language), database schemas, user interfaces, entity-relationship diagrams and connection to object-oriented programming.
• Introduction to logic: Propositional logic (truth tables, normal forms), predicates and first-order logic, e.g. for semantics of SQL-queries.
• Knowledge graph technology: RDF, SPARQL queries and end points, OWL and description logic, semantically characterized data exchange, ontology development.

The participants develop the ability to

• assess requirements and evaluate/improve processes in data managment in accordance with established recommendations for good practice;
• work with relational databases in a systematic way and support users by developing simple interfaces in Python;
• characterize the semantics of data in knowledge-based systems through formal logic;
• use non-relational databases, specify metadata and communicate information following the formalism based on RDF/OWL.

Competencies from the course can be developed further through DAT230 (Data management and analysis).