Module Overview

What You’ll Learn

• Understand what a database is
• Learn why SQL exists
• Understand relational databases
• Install PostgreSQL
• Connect to PostgreSQL using pgAdmin and psql

💡 Why this module matters: Every later module in this course assumes PostgreSQL is running on your machine and that terms like “database,” “DBMS,” and “RDBMS” already make sense. Skipping straight to SELECT without this foundation is exactly how gaps in understanding show up later, as confusion over words nobody stopped to define.

What’s Covered

• What is data? and database vs. spreadsheet, the actual problem a database solves.
• DBMS and RDBMS, the software category, and the specific, relational kind this course is built around.
• SQL overview, the language every RDBMS understands.
• PostgreSQL overview, what it is and why this course is built around it.
• Installing PostgreSQL, getting the server itself running on your machine.
• pgAdmin, PostgreSQL’s official graphical client.
• psql terminal, PostgreSQL’s official command-line client.
• Creating your first database, CREATE DATABASE, and what a new database starts with automatically.

Hands-On

By the end of this module, you’ll have installed PostgreSQL, connected to it both with pgAdmin and with psql, created a database of your own, and run your first real SQL query against it.

Table creation and the rest of SQL itself start in the modules that follow, this module’s entire job is making sure the ground underneath them is solid.