Learning SQL with a Computerized
Antonija Mitrovic
Computer Science Depaitment, University of Canterbury
Chriskhurch, New- Zealand
tanja@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Abstract
SQL, the dominant databaselanguage, is a simple and
highly structured language; yet, students have many
difficulties learning it. This paper presentsSQL-Tutor, an
Intelligent Teaching Systemdesignedasa guided discovery
learning environmept,which helps studentsin overcoming
thesedifficulties. We present design issuesand the current
state in the implementation of the system, with special
focus on individualization of instruction towards a
particular student.
Introduction _ _
Thk author has beenteaching SQL since 1991,as a part bf
a Database Management course. The course is usually
taken by abotit 50 higher-level undergraduatestu$&ts,.and
coversvarious topics, suchas datamodels,databasedesign;
relational query languages (SQL, relational algebra and
calculus), query processing, normalization theory,
transactionprocessingand distributed daebases.
SQL is a simple and highly structured language; yet,
studentshave many difficulties learning it. In this paperwe
present SQL-Tutor, an Intelligent Teaching System (ITS)
developedfor guided discovery learning of SQL. As other
ITSs, SQL-Tutor focuses on the individualization of
instructional sessions towards a particular student, by
developing a model of student’s knowledge, learning
abilities and general characteristics, and tailoring
instructional actionsto student’sneeds.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. hi the next
sectionwe look at the typical problemsstudentshave when
learning SQL and then ‘discusssomerelated approachesto
supporting SQL learning ,in section 3. Section 4 presents
the architecture pf SQL-Tutor, and briefly surveys’ its
components.Learning support provided by SQL-Tutor is
the theme of section 5. Finally, section 6 gives die&ions
for fitore researchand our plans for SQL-Tutor.
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SIGSCE98 AtkintaGA USA e ’ Notethatthestudentis givenonly onemessage at a time,as
Copyright
19980-89791-994-7I98I2.S.00
307
Tutor
Why SQL?
SQL is a completedatabaselanguage;it contains data and
view definition statements,as well as data manipulation
statements.The entry level of SQL2 standardfrom 1992 is
supportedby mostDBMS vendorstoday. Although there is
a movementtowards graphical query interfaces, SQL is an
extremely important developmentin the databaseworld. It
will be, used for years to come either for interactive or
programmed access to databases (embedded in other
programming languages. and tools for application
development). SQL3, the latest standard scheduled to
~pp.~ in 1998,-islikely to gain even more importance for
SQL, with the introduction of support for knowledge-based
and 00 -applications and distributed databases,among
other-newfeatures.
Despite the simplicity and highly structured nature of
SQL, studentshavemany problems learning it. Someerrors
in students’ queries come from the burden of having to
memorize databaseschemas;incorrect solutions may, for
example, contain incorrect table or attribute names. Other
errors come from misconceptions in student’s
understanding of the elements of SQL and the relational
data model in general. Someof the conceptsstudentsfind
particularly difficult to grasp are grouping and restricting
grouping. Join conditions and the difference between
aggregateand scalar functions are another two common
sources of confusion. Other reseaizhers report the same
studentmisconceptions[6].
SQL is usually taught in the classroom, by solving
problems on the blackboard, complemented by lab
exercises.However, studentsfind that is not easy to learn
SQL directly by working with a DBMS, as the error!
messagesare limited to the syntax only. Figure 1 illustrates
a situation in which example 1 requires the student to
specify a query with five clauses,as shown in the correct
solution. When the studententershis/her incorrect solution,
typically the error messagegeneratedby a RDBMS (Ingres
in this case) will not be of much help. The same figure
illustrates the kind of messages’the student may obtain
from SQL-Tutor. Note that SQL-Tutor can give feedback
on semanticerrors aswell (such as specifying two tables in
FROM where only the MOVIE table is needed).
governedby thkpedagogical rules.Herewe showall relevant
messages for illustration.
Example 1: For eachdirector, list the director’snumberand the total number of awardswon by comedieshe/she directed
if that number is greaterthan 1.

Correct solution: Student’s solution:

SELECT DIRECTOR,SUM(AAWON) SELECT DIRECTOR,SUM@AWON) '
FROM MOVIE FROM DIRECTOR JOIN MOVIE
WHERETYPE='comedy ON DIRECTOR=DIRECTOR.NUMBER
.
GROUPBY DIRECTOR WHERETYPE='comedy'
HAVING SUM(AAWON)> 1

INGRES:.E_USOB63 line 1, The columns in the SELECT clause must be contained in

the GROUPBY clause.
. , "
SQL-Tutor: ’ I
l You need to speciJL the GROUP BY clause! The problem requires summary information.
. Spectfy the HAJ%VG clauseas well! Not allgroupsproduced by the GROUP BYclause are relevantfor this problem.
l You do not need all thetables you specified!
0’ Ifthere are aggregate functions in the SELWT clause, and the GROUP BY clause is empty, then SELECT must consists
of aggregate functions only. / ‘_ ,I
. For-everytable’that appears-in the FROMclause, there must be at least one attributefrom that table used in any clause
II I{‘ii
of the query.
/, ,I :.&
I i ., f
,;‘i :, &&e 1, $ia&quacy of feedback from a RDBMS :
I
notice the error made. However, SQL-Tutor provides an

I
/
Example 2: .List ,thenarhesof,all directors born in or after appropriatemessage.
1920. ” ,,a,, I
,” ‘, ’
Related Work 1
Correct sollion: ,-- -. 0 !I
SELECT LNAME, <FNAME There have been several systems that support learning
FROM DIRECTOR I -! relational query languages.WinRDBI [3] enablesstudents
WHEREBORN ,>= 1920 ,,I : to specify queries in relational algebra, tuple or domain
IL relational calculus, or SQL. Queries can be executed and
Student’s solution: I’, students can inspect resulting tables. The system also
SELECT LNAME, FNAME allows studentsto inspect definitions of tables, createnew
FROM DIRECTOR i ,: databases,alter or update existing databasesand store
WHEREDIqD >= 1920 !. definitions of queries.
The esql system[6] supportslearning SQL by visualizing
Tngres:
lnqqe fnamk the stagesin query processing.The student seesesql as a
Hitchco& 'Alfrbd graphical query interface. Once the studenthas specified a
De' Mille Cecil SQL statement,the systemprovides a step-by-stepdisplay
of how the resulting table is formed.
Fbrd, ', ,.' !,," ,t',John
"
Both systems provide more’ information on SQL than
SQL-Tuto;: ’ ’ commercial DBMSs and better user interfaces. However,
Check that you are comparing the numerical constant tothe they suffer from the sameproblem as DBMSs: they cam@
tight attribute in the WERE clause! ’ ’ provide feedbackbasedon the student’ssolution, due to the
. . lack of knowledge neededto reasonabout the semanticsof
:,
the problem being solved.
Figure 2. Inability of a’ RDBMS to deal with semantic
errors b ‘_I SQL-Tutor
, ’ * I_ .,
Figure 2 illustrates a’situation of a semanticerror. Instead It is well known that one-onione human tutoring is much
of using the BORN attribute, the students specified the more effective than traditional classroom instruction [2],
search condition on the DIED attribute, and the ‘DBMS ’ The goal of researchin ITS is to build computerizedtutors
produced the result ,showh. The student.may not even that achieve the effects of learning individually with a

308
 human tutor. ITSs contain domain knowledge, which
enablesthem to selectproblemsto be posedto students,to
diagnoze student’ssolution and/or to solve the problems.
Furthermore,such systemsalso contain knowledge of their
students, represented in the form of student models.
Pedagogical knowledge is necessaryin ITSs in order to
generate appropriate pedagogical actions (such as
feedback). Finally, these systems also require
communication knowledge, in order to communicate
effectively with students.
SQL-Tutor is an ITS for SQL programming,implemented
in CLOS [5] on SUN workstations.It will soonbe ported to
PC compatibles. Many dialects of SQL exist, since
databasevendors do not follow the standards.SQL-Tutor
hasbeentailored to SQL as implementedby Ingres.
SQL-Tutor is designed as a practice environment; we
supposethat studentshave previously been exposedto the
concepts of databasemanagementin lectures. Therefore,
the systemis not a substitute for the conventional style of
education, but a complement to it. The system currently
covers only the SELECT statement of SQL, but the same
approach could be used with other SQL statements.This
focus on the SELECT statement does not reduce the
importance of the system,becausequeries causethe most
misconceptions for students. Moreover, many of the
conceptscoveredby SELECT are directly relevant to other
SQL statementsand other relational databaselanguagesin
general.
student CBM
models
I interface, and reactsto it appropriately.At the beginning of
Pedagogical
module
T checks whether the solution is correct or incorrect, and
9
Interface
Student
Figure 3. Architecture of SQL,-Tutor
As illustrated in figure 3, SQL-Tutor has a very simple
architecture; it consists of a user interface, pedagogical
module and a student modeler. The interface is illustrated
in figure 4. The interface is a mediating device and henceit
provides information about the system itself The main
window of SQL-Tutor is divided into three areasthat are
always visible to the student The upper part of the window
displays the text of the problem being solved and the
student can always remind him/herself easily of the
elementsrequestedin the query. The middle part contains
309
, ..r--
the clausesof the SQL SELECT statement,thus visualizing
the goal structure. Studentsneed not rememberthe exact
keywordsusedand the relative order of clauses.The lowest
part displays the schemaof the currently chosen database.
The schema name is given first, followed by the
descriptionsof tables.Each table is shown by its name and
schemaenclosedin a box. The name(s) of the attribute(s)
forming the primary key is underlined and given in blue.
The foreign key attributes are given in red. In such ways,
the interface of SQL-Tutor supportsthe reification of goal
structure and reduces the working-memory load of
students.
The visualization of schemas is quite important; all
databaseusers are painfully aware of the constantneed to
remembertable and attribute namesand the corresponding
semanticsas well. Studentscan ask for the description of
databases,tables or attributes by selecting appropriate
options from the Help menu, or by directly selecting
table/attribute names. Furthermore, users can learn about
elements of SQL, such as functions, expressions,
predicates, operators and others, by selecting appropriate
options in the Help menu.The motivation here is to remove
from the student some of the cognitive load required for
checking the low-level syntax and to enablethe studentto
focus on higher-level query definition problems. Students
can also obtain the descriptions of various clauses by
selectingthe appropriateclauseor by asking for help from
the main menu The Open menu allows for selection of a
databaseor a problem to work on.
The pedagogicalmodule (PM) is the heart of the system;it
selects problems to be given to students and generates
appropriate instructional actions according to the student
model. PM observesevery student’saction performedin the
the interaction, a problem must be selectedfor the student
to work on. When the student enters the solution for the
current problem, PM sendsit to the studentmodeler,which
updatesthe student model. The pedagogical module then
generatesappropriatefeedback.When the current problem
is solved, or the studentrequiresa new problem to work on,
the pedagogicalmodule selectsa new problem on the basis
of the studentmodel. The system contains definitions of
several databases,which are also implemented on the
RDBMS used in the lab (currently Ingres). New databases
can easily be added,by supplying the sameSQL files used
to createthe databasein Ingres.
SQL.-Tutor also contains a set of problems for specified
databasesand the ideal solutions to them. The solutions are
necessarybecausethe systemhasno domain module and is
not capableof solving problems. The rationale for such a
departure from the typical architecture of an ITS, which
also includes a domain module, follows. Designing an ITS
to teach SQL presentsvarious difficulties. Databasequeries
J~2-,“^‘.; ,,, _ -,,...,. . . . r-...,.. *-- .,,. -. . I-
J .I
2 *
are given in a natural language;however,the current state-
of-the-art in Natural LanguageProcessing(NLP) is still far
from being able of handling various problems present in
queries, such as references and synonyms. There is a
possibility to circumscribethe I&P problem: the text of the
problem may be representednot in its natural-language
.form, but in a’form which could be the product of NLP, as
done in [l]. However, it is hard not to build parts of the
solution into such a representation1,IFurthermore,even if
we overlook the NLP problem, the knowledge required to
,write, SQL queries isvery fuzzy. Therefore, it, would !bk
,very difficult,, if not entirely impossible, to develop a
problem solver inthis area. ’ .,,
SQL-Tutor is basedon Constraint-BasedModeling (CBM)
.[8], a student modeling approach that focuseson student
errors. For further details. of CBM and how it is
implementedin SQL-Tutor, see [7]. Domain knowledge is
representedin CBM in a descriptive form, as constraints,
and is used to identify the errors. Constraints divide all
possible problem statesinto equivalenceclasses.All states
in a single classare deemedto be pedagogically equivalent
‘in that they generatethe sameinstructional action. _ :
SQL-Tutor evaluatesstudents’solutions by matching them
to constraints:Someconstraintsdeal with the syntax of the
&urguage;for example,there is a constraint saying that the
SELECT clauses of all solutions must not be empty.
Another example of a syntactic constraint checksthat if a
student’s solution contains aggregate functions in the
SELECT clauseand the GROUP BY clauseis empty, then
the only kind of expressionsallowed in the SELECT clause
are aggregate functions. Other constraints deal with
-..._,. _ -.-
i
', Figure 4. The Interfaceof SQL-Tutor
semanticsof problems,by comparing students’solutions to
the ideal (correct) ones.That is the reasonfor SQGTutor to
require ideal solutions to problems.
Constraintsthat comparethe student’ssolution to the ideal
one are more complex. For example,constraint 186 applies
to situationswhere the WHERE clauseof the ideal solution
contains (at least one) condition which checkswhether the
value of a numeric attribute is greater than some numeric
constant and the same attribute appears in the student’s
solution in a condition with greater-than-or-equalinsteadof
the grater-than operator. If that is the case,the constraint
ensuresthat the constantin the student’ssolution is 1 less
than the constantin the ideal solution.
The constraintbaseof SQL-Tutor currently consists of 199
constraints, which are acquired by analyzing the domain
knowledge [4,9] and on the basis of a comparativeanalysis
of correct and incorrect solutions. It is well known that
knowledge acquisition is a very slow, time-consuming and
labour-intensive nrocess.Anderson [l] reports 10 or more
hours necessaryior induction of a production rule. When
interviewing domain expertsin order to acquire knowledge
for expert systems, usually 2 to 5 production rules
,equivalents are identified per day. The time spent on
identification, implementation and testing of SQL-Tutor
constraints averagesat 1.3 hours per constraint, which is
significantly shorter than times above. This may be the
consequenceof the same person serving as the domain
expert and knowledge engineer (and the systemdeveloper,
at that matter), but may also illustrate the appropriateness
of the chosenformalism.
310
A student model contains general information about the
student (his/her name and the level of knowledge), a
history of previously solved problems, and information
about the usage of constrains, as mancfestedin student’s
solutions.
Learning in SQL-Tutor
The main goal of ITSs is the individualization of
instruction. In SQL-Tutor, insection can be individualized
in several ways, by generating feedbackdyn&nically and
selecting topics and problems, on the basis of the student
model.
The level of feedbackdetermineshow much information is
provided to the student. Currently, there are five levels of
feedback in the system: positive/negative feedback, error
flag, hint, partial solution and complete solution, arranged
in the increasingorder of the amount of information. At the
lowest level (positive/negative feedback), the message
simply informs the student whether the solution is correct
or not and, in the later case,how many errors there are. An
error flag messageinforms the studentab&t the clause*in
which the error occurred.A hint-type:messagegives more
information about the type of error, as illustrated in figure
4. Here, the student is given a general descri&ion of the
cause of the error. Partial solution feedbackdisplays the
correct content bf the. clause in question, , while the
complete soiution sbply displays the correct solution of
the current problem.
Problemsare also selectedon the basis of a studentmodel.
SQL-Tutor examines the student model and s’elects 8
problem for a constraint that’ the student has violated
before, or a problem that requiresthe use of a constraintnot
used by the student.The systemalso allows,the studentto
select the problem on his/her own. Such an approach
introduces randomness in the coverage of co&raints,
which can meari that the student in practising the use of
someknown cotistraint or even introducing new ones.,The
randomnessthus provides for challengeand/or review, and
at the sametime helps control for potential inaccuraciesin
the student model. Admittedly, the problem selection
strategiesjust discussedaretoo simple and we are currently
developing more sophisticatedones. . . ” 2. 2
SQL-Tutor is based on guided disc&&y ahd’learning-by-
doing. It supports three kinds of’ learning: conceptual,
problem solving and me&learning. The @dent can learn
about concepts and elements,,!of SQL by asking for
explanations, using menu option’sand interface don’trols.
SQL-Tutor is a problem-solving environment th& supports
acquisition of domain knowledge in a declarativeform (i.e.
constraints) and strengthening of ,+is knowledge in
practice. SQl-Tutor provides assistancehi problem solving
and argumentsagainstincorrect actions.Finally, th$ system
encouragesme&learning by supporting self-explanation
* In casethatthereareseveralmessages for variousclauses,the
pedagogical modulewill selectonepf themto startwith.
311
on the basis of error messagesand correct solutions. We
plan to elaboratethe pedagogicalactions that will provide
more emphasison self-explanation,and also to incorporate
other forms of meta-learning,such asusing analogies.
Conclusions
This paper presented the current state in the
implement&on of SQL-Tutor. The systemhas been shown
to a number of database teachers, who were very
supportive and expressedgreat ‘enthusiasmfor using it in
their. own courses. We plan the system to be ready for
/
classroomuse in early 1998.
Before the systemcan bp evaluated,th&e are severalshort-
term goals, such as further sophistication of the interface
and completion of the constraint base.In order to provide a
more realistic working environment, we plan to connect
SQL-Tutor to a DBMS. In such a way, the student may
inspecttablesor query results.
We believe that SQL-Tutor will prove to be invaluable due
‘to the semanticallyrich feedbackit generatesand its ability
to adapt,to a particular student.There are many possibilities
for extending this research. More research is needed on
pedagogicalrules and problem-selectingstrategies.Related
arks ‘in the databasearena, such as relational algebra and
calculus, data modeling or nomialization, could serve as
domains for other small instructional tools and be
connected with SQL-Tutor into a database,_exploration
“worldl’.
-j, ,/~ ;.
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