More generic skills: Relational databases for Biochemistry

and Nutrition students

Gareth DenyerJill Johnston

Dale Hancock

School of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences

Background

• Several years teaching Excel– Integration between Years 2 and 3

– Strategy always to teach concepts• Let students experiment

• NO RECIPES!!

• Students highly skilled– Use for all experimental data and

graphs• Integration of photos

• Locked reference cells

• Add-ins

Limitations of XL

• Huge amounts of data– Microarray or other Bioinformatic data– Unwieldy, 65,000 row maximum

• Lack of scalability– Adding rows/columns can change

equations– Sometimes a bit too flexible!

• Equations in individual cells can be changed

– Not relational• Information can be inconsistent• Information needlessly repeated (redundant)

• Bad sorts!

AUSNUT

• Australian/NZ food data tables

– Drives all Australian nutritional analysis tools

– 4,500 food items– But out of date – ‘new ethnic’

foods lacking

• Could XL use the tables to create a nutritional analysis tool??

Student XL buildCopy relevant rows containing Food Name and Nutrient info for each ingredient

For each ingredient, set a quantity and the weight

Work out how much energy, etc, each ingredient contributes to the recipe

Add ‘em up Knowing total weight and serve number, calculate amount per 100g and amount per serve

Reflections on XL

• New recipe?• New ingredients? Deleting

Ingredients?• Change quantities?• Using this recipe in another

recipe?– eg, pancakes in a savoury crepe

recipe

• Formatting– Production of nutritional labels

• Searching, Sorting….

Database

• Used FileMaker Pro– Very easy to use

• Layouts like “Powerpoint”

– 30-day free trial version available• Enables students to work at home

– But Access could be used• Comes with standard MS Office install

• Not very user-friendly

How to Teach DB skills

• Keep it in CONTEXT!– Especially for this cohort!

• Go for the “Wow!” effect early– Layouts, buttons, relationships

– Desire to implement ‘features’ drove experimentation and learning!

Example

Things to Do

– Experiment with searches• Using FIND

• Using multiple criteria– Eg, Foods with lots of fat, little sodium, etc

– Make a couple of layouts• A Form layout (one food per page)

• A Table layout (like a spreadsheet)

• A List layout (like, er, a list)

– Navigate between layouts

– Make it quick to do a find• First taste of scripts

Relationships

– Once we know the Food ID we know

• The name of the food

• The amount of each nutrient in 100g of the food

– So a recipe could simply list …• The FoodIDs

• The Quantities of each food

– Make a Recipes table• RECIPE_ID, RECIPE_NAME

– Make a RecipeItems table• RECIPE_ID, FOOD_ID, QUANTITY

Ultimately

– Easy selection of foods for recipes• Easy navigation between files and

layouts• Buttons and scripts for anything you

do more than twice!

– Using Recipes as new food items– Beautiful reports

• One recipe to the page• Food labels• Sell it!!!!!!!

– Extrapolate to diet history• What’s needed?

Millorraine

Courelle

Clients, interaction with XL

Conditional drop-downs

Gang of Five

Help screen, lots of buttons!

Three Ss Food labels

Project Managment

• The tool– What features do you want– Prioritise

• The instructions (both for user and designer)– Screenshots– “Idiot proof” or conceptual?– FAQ– Troubleshooting– Tips and tricks

• What YOU find tricky someone else will too!

Extrapolations I

– Go “head to head” with Foodworks!

REFLECTION!!• How much faster is Foodworks?

• What makes it better?

• What features would you need to make your tool comparable?

– Plain English names for foods• Description field

• NB. Description fields in Foods.txt

– Other things in Recipe file• Method?

• Ingredients List?

• Produce a nicely formatted Information Label

Extrapolations II

• Adding new foods not in AUSNUT– Also adding recipes so they become “Foods”

• Customise the Foods list– To better reflect an average pantry

– Or YOUR pantry

• Measures– Translating cups/spoons to grams

– NB. Measures file in AUSNUT 1999

• Start again…!– Writing instructions as you build

• Error Trapping– Where can you or a user get stuck

– How to prevent this, how to get out of a trap

• Diet histories, food recall, etc– Patient managment

Where now?

• Do it all over again?– Most useful for the students

• Build on what was done last year?– Better ‘product’ at the end