An Experimental Investigation of Complexity in Database Query Formulation Tasks

Autor/inn/en	Casterella, Gretchen Irwin; Vijayasarathy, Leo
Titel	An Experimental Investigation of Complexity in Database Query Formulation Tasks
Quelle	In: Journal of Information Systems Education, 24 (2013) 3, S.211-221 (11 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1055-3096
Schlagwörter	Databases; Programming Languages; Difficulty Level; Ambiguity (Context); Undergraduate Students; Database Management Systems; Experiments; Activities; Performance; Multivariate Analysis + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Datenbank; Schwierigkeitsgrad; Datenbanksystem; Erprobung; Achievement; Leistung; Multivariate Analyse
Abstract	Information Technology professionals and other knowledge workers rely on their ability to extract data from organizational databases to respond to business questions and support decision making. Structured query language (SQL) is the standard programming language for querying data in relational databases, and SQL skills are in high demand and are taught in most introductory database courses. We examined students' performance on query formulation tasks, in an experimental setting which varied the complexity of the query and the ambiguity of the information request. Our results confirm the main effects of query complexity and request ambiguity found in prior studies (Borthick et al. 2001). In addition, we found an interaction effect between complexity and ambiguity, namely that low ambiguity is more important as tasks increase in complexity. We also found that students' confidence with entity-relationship diagrams corresponds to reduced time spent on query formulation, and their ability to evaluate the accuracy of their queries reduces as query complexity increases. We discuss the implications of these findings with some suggestions for future research. (As Provided).
Anmerkungen	Journal of Information Systems Education. e-mail: editor@jise.org; Web site: http://www.jise.org
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10