Hi and welcome to this Behind the Scenes video of Database Star Academy.
I recorded this for members of my online database training platform, but thought it
would be useful for YouTube for those of you who want to know more. So, let's take a look!
Welcome to Database Star Academy. This video will demonstrate what's inside the Academy,
how to navigate it, and some of the features.
Once you log in, you'll be taken to the Dashboard. This page contains
links to a few of the main areas in the Academy and some more information.
At the top of the screen, under the logo, you'll see the blue navigation bar. There are links to
the Home page, which is the dashboard, as well as Course Library, Practice Exercises, Bonus Content,
Learning Profile, and Account. We'll go into those in a little more detail shortly.
Under the navigation bar and the heading are a few teal-coloured icons.
These link to the main areas in the Academy.
We have courses on a range of topics which you can access with the Courses link.
Practice Exercises is a range of practice SQL problems you can take to improve your skills.
Sample Data is a collection of sample data scripts and questions to practice your skills.
Finally, Bonus Content is a range of PDFs and SQL scripts on a range of topics.
Under these links is a "pick up where you left off" link, which shows the most recent lesson
or page you were on. This is helpful if you return to the Academy halfway through a course.
Below that is a Recently Added section which will change regularly but usually has a couple
of paragraphs on what's new. Here you can see we've recently added badges, achievements,
a leaderboard, and updated this dashboard.
Below the Recently Added is a Coming Soon section. This will briefly describe what to expect in the
next month or two in the Academy. Here we can see Timesavers, Assignments, and Case Studies.
On the right, we have an email address where you can contact me directly as a member.
We've also got the Leaderboard,
which shows the top 10 users based on the number of total points they have earned.
Below the Coming Soon section, we have an Onboarding Questionnaire. This is a short set
of questions to rate yourself on some skills and the result will recommend some content for you.
Below the questionnaire is the welcome video, where this video will go.
Alright, so we've seen what's on the Dashboard. Let's take a look at Courses.
Click on the Courses link on the top of the page here, or the Course Library on the menu.
This is the Course Library inside Database Star Academy. It's broken up into several areas.
We've got Getting Started with SQL at the top, where there are four different courses,
each of them showing you how to get started with a specific database management system.
You can then move onto the next set of courses,
which cover all of these databases and show more concepts.
We've got a section on Mastering the Select Query with a few courses in here.
Next is Data Manipulation, where there are currently courses on bulk insert and soft delete.
There are a few courses in the Designing a Database category.
We've got a section on Procedural Programming,
which has a few courses on Oracle PL/SQL at the moment.
After that we've got a range of other courses on SQL concepts,
such as subqueries, indexes, CTEs, and more.
There's a section on improving your queries, where you'll see how to write faster SQL,
and see some case studies and complex queries.
Finally, there's a section called Growing and Improving which covers
getting the Oracle Certified Associate, and learning a few different SQL editors.
So that's the course library. This is getting updated regularly,
so there will be more courses added and improved over time.
Click on one course and you'll be taken to the Course page.
On the Course page, you'll see the course title, your completion progress,
and a brief description of the course.
Some courses come in a PDF version, which you can download and read offline,
such as on your lunch break at work or on public transport.
After that, you'll see the course content. You can expand and collapse each of these sections,
which are the modules. Inside each module are lessons. The lessons and
modules with a green tick next to them are those that are completed.
Click on a lesson to open it.
On the Lesson page will be the title and a video. Click Play to watch the video.
You can change a few different settings on the video by clicking the Settings icon on the bottom
right, such as the quality and playback speed. Changing the speed is helpful if you think I talk
too fast, or can't understand my Australian accent, or if you think I talk too slow.
On the right of that is the Full Screen button which shows the video in full screen.
This can be helpful if you want to zoom in further on what's being shown.
Once you've finished the lesson, click Mark Complete and you'll be taken to the next lesson.
The progress bar will increase as well.
So that's what a lesson looks like.
At the top of the page, the next section is Practice Exercises.
This Practice Exercises section looks the same as a Course with lessons and modules.
Expand the modules and you'll see different entries here,
each of which represent a practice exercise.
Click on an exercise and this is what you'll see.
This example shows a sample table with some data, and an exercise or a query to write.
You can see the answer by clicking the Answer button which will expand.
You can learn more about the concepts in each of the exercises by watching the content
or reading the posts mentioned on the page.
So that's what a practice exercise looks like.
Click on Bonus Content on the top of the page.
On this page, you'll see a lot of PDFs that are available on a whole range of topics.
We've got some timesaver guides which contain a bunch of tips to help you save time in your IDE.
We've got some database syntax cheat sheets here,
and some other cheat sheets like IDE comparison and SQL functions.
We've got a range of other guides such as best practices and common field guidelines.
A lot of these are freely available on the Database Star website,
but here they all are in one place for your convenience.
Also, many of them are Oracle-focused,
and there are plans to update them to be applicable to other databases in the future.
Next, we have the Learning Profile.
On this page, you'll see a few things. First there is your total points,
which you get from completing courses, logging in, and being a member for a while.
As you earn more points and badges, you'll achieve Ranks. You'll see here
that I've achieved the Apprentice rank as I've gotten 25 points.
Next we have Badges, which are different achievements you unlock
as you do things in the Academy.
After Badges, we have the Courses.
This shows all of the courses in the Academy with your progress on each one.
For each course, you can see the status, such as whether it's in progress or completed.
If you have completed a course,
you'll be able to access a Certificate of Completion here by clicking on this icon.
Finally, we have the Account section.
On the Account page there are a few tabs.
The Home tab shows your name and email address which you can change.
The Subscription tab will show you what your membership level is,
and when it started. If you ever want to cancel your subscription, this is where you go.
It's only a few clicks to cancel - you don't need to call someone or wait a certain number of days.
You can also pause your membership or change your plan to an annual plan.
On the Payments tab you can see a history of all of your payments. This is a test account,
which is why there's only one payment of Free, but your account will show more here.
Finally, click the Logout button to log out of the Academy.
And that brings us to the end of this behind the scenes tour of Database Star Academy.
If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.
If you want to sign up for the Academy, visit databasestar.com/dsa. You can find
out more about the pricing, what's included, and more about how it all works on that page.
Thanks for watching.