CIT 407 is a hands-on, undergraduate-level T-SQL course delivered across 8 progressive weeks. Students develop the skills required to design, write, tune, secure, and operate SQL Server databases — building working solutions on real Microsoft SQL Server installations (SQL Server 2022 Developer Edition is free and full-featured) rather than learning through case studies alone.
Each week is anchored to a realistic business scenario in a different industry vertical: online retail (developer onboarding), healthcare (clinic schema design), e-commerce (indexing performance crisis), retail BI (single-table query optimization), executive reporting (multi-table analytical queries), banking (ACID transactions), healthcare data warehouse (HIPAA security), and a legacy-system rescue capstone. The scenario format ensures students develop not only T-SQL syntax fluency but also the diagnostic and consultative thinking expected of a professional database developer.
A defining feature of CIT 407 is the explicit integration of generative AI throughout the database development lifecycle. Students apply AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot in SSMS) every week to query generation, execution-plan interpretation, schema design, performance diagnosis, security audit, and code review — and they critically evaluate every AI output against Microsoft Learn documentation and against actual measured performance on real SQL Server instances. The course produces graduates who can join a database team and contribute on day one, and who can integrate AI into their professional practice transparently and effectively.
- Teacher: Parnell Dujour