Abstract:

One of the specialist courses in the process of educating Computer Science (CS) students is the Database. This is a very important course, because a significant number of graduates of the CS studies will develop and maintain database applications. There are many tools that support the design, implementation, documentation and management of databases. Due to their availability, they are quite often used in higher education. There are many tools on the market, either commercial or open source. The open source tools are preferred by both lecturers and students.

The article presents the process of selecting the most convenient open source tools for database design to support the didactic process of CS students. In the selection process, the following research hypothesis was made:
In the didactic process, the most useful tool for supporting database design is the open source tool MySQL Workbench.
In the selection process, two research methods were used: a scientific experiment and a multi-criteria comparative analysis.

The object of the research was five different open source tools: MySQL Workbench, Valentina Studio, dbForge Studio for MySQL, SQLyog Community and Heidi SQL. The scientific experiment was conducted by five CS students, who have made the database model in using the selected five tools and assessed the process of its implementation. As a research tool, an exemplary database model was prepared containing twelve interrelated tables and a questionnaire for the process of model implementation. The comparative analysis was based on selected objective criteria (file size, functionality of the tool) and subjective criteria (experiment data: ease of installation, usability of the interface, convenience of use, implementation time). The gained data was used in the multicriteria analysis, which allowed the defined criteria to be reduced to the summary one and verify the research hypothesis. The results of the research may be useful to students and lecturers in the higher education didactics process.

Keywords:

Database teaching, tools, multi-criteria selection.