Students semantic mistakes in writing seven different types of SQL queries

Ahadi, A; Prior, J; Behbood, V; Lister, R

Students semantic mistakes in writing seven different types of SQL queries

Ahadi, A

Prior, J

Behbood, V Lister, R

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Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE, 2016, 11-13-July-2016 pp. 272 - 277
Issue Date:: 2016-07-11

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Ahadi, A https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2018-3065	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Prior, J https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7182-0984	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Behbood, V	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Lister, R https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5780-0445	en_US
dc.date.available	2016-03-01	en_US
dc.date.issued	2016-07-11	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE, 2016, 11-13-July-2016 pp. 272 - 277	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781450342315	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1942-647X	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/43703
dc.description.abstract	Computer science researchers have studied extensively the mistakes of novice programmers. In comparison, little attention has been given to studying the mistakes of people who are novices at writing database queries. This paper represents the first large scale analysis of students' semantic mistakes in writing different types of SQL SELECT statements. Over 160 thousand snapshots of SQL queries were collected from over 2300 students across nine years. We describe the most common semantic mistakes that these students made when writing different types of SQL statements, and suggest reasons behind those mistakes. We mapped the semantic mistakes we identified in our data to different semantic categories found in the literature. Our findings show that the majority of semantic mistakes are of the type "omission". Most of these omissions happen in queries that require a JOIN, a subquery, or a GROUP BY operator. We conclude that it is important to explicitly teach students techniques for choosing the appropriate type of query when designing a SQL query.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, ITiCSE	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1145/2899415.2899464	en_US
dc.title	Students semantic mistakes in writing seven different types of SQL queries	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.citation.volume	11-13-July-2016	en_US
utslib.for	1301 Education Systems	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Computer Science
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CAI - Centre for Artificial Intelligence
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - HCTD - Human Centred Technology Design
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	11-13-July-2016	en_US

Abstract:

Computer science researchers have studied extensively the mistakes of novice programmers. In comparison, little attention has been given to studying the mistakes of people who are novices at writing database queries. This paper represents the first large scale analysis of students' semantic mistakes in writing different types of SQL SELECT statements. Over 160 thousand snapshots of SQL queries were collected from over 2300 students across nine years. We describe the most common semantic mistakes that these students made when writing different types of SQL statements, and suggest reasons behind those mistakes. We mapped the semantic mistakes we identified in our data to different semantic categories found in the literature. Our findings show that the majority of semantic mistakes are of the type "omission". Most of these omissions happen in queries that require a JOIN, a subquery, or a GROUP BY operator. We conclude that it is important to explicitly teach students techniques for choosing the appropriate type of query when designing a SQL query.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/43703