Concentration in Data Analytics and Database Systems

Study Synchronously Online or On Campus: It's Your Choice STEM-Certified Program

The Touro GST Data Analytics and Database Systems program explores current issues in designing, managing, and securing complex, organized information systems

This degree program is the perfect fitfor industry professionals, recent computer science graduates, as well as industry newcomers. Our courses cater to every skill level and will work with you on your professional need

Career options include:

• Data Analyst

• Business Intelligence Analyst

• Data Scientist

• Data Engineer

• Database Administrator

Program Requirements

Data Analytics and Database Systems Required Courses

MSIN 615

Database Management and Administration

This course provides students with a solid foundation in database management and design concepts and related skills. The course will explore database design techniques such as Entity Relationship modeling, normalization, database modeling/design tools such as Microsoft Visio or MySQL Workbench and UML, database implementation techniques using SQL Server Express. Students will learn how to examine user requirements and design and implement a database that supports the requirements and helps enforce the business constraints. Students will utilize various techniques to identify and correct errors that exist in proposed database designs. Students will design and implement databases and use SQL to construct simple and nested queries and inner joins to retrieve and manipulate data. Students will become familiar with SQL Server Management Studio, using it to implement and populate databases and test queries written in SQL.
Prerequisite: MDAN 610 or equivalent
3 Credits

MSIN 616

Advanced Database Management and Data Analysis

Building on Database Management and Administration, the course explores additional data modeling techniques, concepts of database integrity and transaction management, stored procedures, user-defined functions, database programming, query optimization, performance and tuning, and other advanced SQL topics.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 627

Multi-Dimensional Analytics and Visualization

The course introduces the practice of managing data as corporate assets by organizations to gain competitive advantage and meet regulatory demand. The course will also describe the data management emerging profession, and skills required to perform the various data management functions for each role.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 637

Principles of Data Analysis

This course is a hands-on introduction to the field of Data Analytics where students will learn the concepts and tools needed throughout the analysis process from formulating the research question to obtaining, cleaning, and collating data to making inferences and publishing results. Students will also learn how to formulate research questions in “data terms” so that it can be analyzed and identify the limitations imposed by the available data. Students will become versed in sorting data, filtering data and creating data totals. They will learn how to use Pivot Tables. They will also master Statistical Functions, Text Functions, Database Functions, Lookup Functions, and Date and Time Functions among others. Students will be introduced to data types, control structures, functions, and debugging tools. They will learn how to acquire data, what it means to clean data by removing inconsistencies and reformat data so that it can be analyzed by statistical tools.
Corequisite: MSIN 616
3 Credits

Data Analytics and Database Systems Elective Courses

MSIN 614

Data Transformation, Migration and Integration

This course combines lectures with hands-on labs to teach students necessary skills to install, upgrade, manage & administer SQL Server instances and databases for performance, high availability &Disaster Recover. Topics covered in the class will include System Databases, Data Files, Log Files & Check Points, Memory CPU and Disk Redundancy Discussions, indexing and query optimization, Database backup and restoration, Log Shipping, Database Mirroring, Database Replication, Database Snapshots, Security, Policy Based Management, SQL Agent, Task Scheduling& Automation, Database Mail, Database Maintenance Plans, Monitoring, Alerting & Tuning, Blocking Transitions & Dedicated Administrator Connection.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 618

Cloud Based Database Systems

Through hands on exercises and labs, the course teaches how to set up, operate and scale databases in the cloud, using today’s most popular database engines and technologies, e.g. SQL Server for traditional relational databases, Amazon RDS for Relational Database as a Service on AWS, MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas for NoSQL databases, Redis for distributed in-memory data stores. The students are also introduced to concepts, strategies, and best practices for designing a cloud-based data warehousing solution using Amazon Redshift. In addition, the course demonstrates how to use business intelligence tools, like Amazon QuickSight, to perform analysis of the data and provide statistics and visualizations.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 620

Database Administration

This course combines lectures with hands-on labs to teach students necessary skills to administer SQL Server instances and databases. Topics covered in the class will include System Databases, Data Files, Log Files & Check Points, Memory CPU and Disk Redundancy Discussions, Functions, Stored Procedures, Triggers, indexing and query optimization, Database backup and restoration, Log Shipping, Database Mirroring, Database Replication, Database Snapshots, Security, Policy Based Management, SQL Agent & Task Scheduling/Automation, Database Maintenance Plans, Monitoring, Alerting & Tuning, New Features, Blocking Transitions & Dedicated Administrator Connection.
Prerequisite: MSIN 616
3 Credits

MSIN 624

Database Reporting Services

This course combines lectures with hands-on labs to teach students necessary skills to create, manage, deploy, schedule and secure SQL Server Reports of various complexities. Students will start with design of simple tabular reports and move onto designing Lists, Matrix and reports involving Charts, gauges and combination of basic reports. Advanced formatting, expressions and interactivity will be incorporated in report design to make them true presentation quality reports
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 626

Principles and Applications of Data Security

This course explains why database security is becoming increasingly important and critical to businesses and individuals. It demonstrates different methods/approaches that can be used to compromise the data in a database and what types of remedies can be applied. It addresses the underlying concepts of security and shows how database security can be realized by implementing Windows OS security, network security, SQL Server security and Web application security. It describes how auditing is used to help implement database security. It illustrates how a robust backup and recovery plan can help secure a database. Students will implement database security using Windows OS and SQL Server.
Prerequisites: MSIN 615 & MSIN 616
3 Credits

MSIN 630

Web Database Application Development

Introduces the principles and practice of implementing and designing medium-sized web database applications. Students learn to apply web programming technology and tools for database implementation to the web, including server-side scripting, session management, and authentication. Students also investigate Internet database application issues including database design, human computer interface (HCI) techniques, and evaluation criteria for designing good web database applications.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 632

Enterprise Data Analytics and Database Systems

The course covers conceptual understanding of the database architecture and how its components work and interact with one another. Students learn how to create an operational data warehouse and the various tools provided by Oracle to define data structures and execute SQL queries as well as stored procedures. Data warehousing concepts such as star schemas and dimensional modeling will be covered in detail. Students will also be introduced to MySQL and perform some various administrative functions using the phpMyAdmin interface for MySQL.
Pre- or Corequisite: MSIN 616
3 Credits

MSIN 633

Data Modeling, Analysis, and Visualization

This course combines lectures with hands-on labs to help students understand transaction systems, data warehouses, fact and dimension tables, design custom columns, custom tables and create multi-dimensional data models based on a wide variety of data sources. Dashboards and widgets of varying complexities will be created using hierarchies, expressions, and functions for data analysis, visualization and decision support.
Pre- or Corequisite: MSIN 616
3 Credits

MSIN 675

Professional Internship Experience

The student will work in a professional environment, for a minimum of 480 hours over a period of at least two semesters. Students may secure an internship independently or may work with the GST Department of Career Services. Weekly logs and examples of work are required for the successful completion of the internship, and are reviewed by the Faculty Internship Coordinator, upon completion of the internship. The purpose of the internship is to provide students with practical, hands-on experience in their chosen field of expertise to complement their coursework. The Internship must be approved in advance by the program chair.
Pre- or Corequisite: Permission of the Program Chair
3 Credits

MSIN 676

Special Topics in Data Analytics

Explores in-depth theoretical and practical issues of data analysis. The main focus is on the data integration, data transformation, data validation, data modeling, machine learning, and the application of advanced statistics.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

MSIN 677

Advanced Data Visualization

This course starts with an introduction to Transactional Databases vs. Data Warehouse, Data Marts, Big Data, No SQL Databases, fact and dimension tables and various tools to understand, analyze and visualize hidden information in Raw data. It combines lectures with hands on exercises and labs, using various components of Tableau and its visualization tools, to create charts, dashboards and stories containing visual presentation of data and their summaries to help make sense of huge collection of such raw data and to communicate the same to decision makers so they can quickly spot trends, see patterns and discover other pieces of information buried in such data to make day to day decisions quickly and efficiently.
Prerequisite: MSIN 615
3 Credits

Any Other Elective Approved by the Dean

Data Analytics and Database Systems Preparatory Courses

Students with insufficient background in computer science or information systems degree, will be required to complete some or all of these courses:

MSIN 511

Technology Concepts and Essentials

The IT Essentials (ITE) curriculum emphasizes practical experience to help students develop fundamental computer and career skills. ITE helps students prepare for entry-level career opportunities in ICT and the CompTIA A+ certification. The course also provides a learning pathway to Cisco CCNA.
1 Credit

GCO 147

Computer Hardware, Software and System Security

This course provides an introduction to the computer hardware, software, and security skills needed to meet the growing demand for entry - level information technology (IT) professionals. It covers the fundamentals of PC computer technology, networking, and security with emphasis on the software portion of the CompTIA A+ 220-802 certification examination. Students develop working knowledge of how computers operate, how to assemble computers, how to troubleshoot hardware and software issues, and implement computer system security.
3 Credits

GCO 141

Introduction to Programming

This course introduces students to problem solving techniques used in programming. Students will learn object-oriented and event driven programming concepts including language constructs, logical structures, file management and error trappings. Students will program in the Alice 2.3 3-D Programming Language Environment that was specifically developed to make learning programming more accessible and exciting to students. Students will learn how to create and use objects and their properties and methods, as well as how to write code for custom object methods. Students will utilize programming control structures such as loops, selection structures, methods, and classes.
3 Credits

MDAN 610

Database Concepts and Design

This course covers the database concepts that are the foundation and building blocks of sound database design and management. It explains why good database design is critical to the accurate and efficient storage and retrieval of data. The course will explore database design techniques such as database models, database modeling/design tools using Microsoft Visio. The course identifies the functions provided by a database management system to help insure the integrity of data. It teaches students how to design a database that maximizes data integrity using normalization techniques. Students will use MS Access interface to create and populate a database. It also covers the use of SQL to create and populate tables, retrieve and update data.
3 Credits

Check out our Data Anayltics student, Cansu Mericli, and visit her Spotlight article HERE to see about her experience with Touro GST.