From the orientation, your reading from week 1 and your own experience answer the following questions.

Relational database tables and spreadsheets look similar with both having rows and columns.  What are some important differences between the two?

Wait a minute are you saying you can't use excel as a database?

To be honest, at one of my previous jobs I have learned a ton about excel spreadsheets where the line between excel table and database table is pretty blurry.

The one consistent truth seems to be that accessing a SQL database will be wayyyy more performant than an excel file. But, excel is turing complete so I'm not sure if there's anything you can't do with excel.

Installing and configuration a database and learning how to use it is more complicated that just reading and writing data to a file.  What are some important reasons that makes a database a useful investment of time? 

Learning the concepts of databases is key to understanding how data storage is used. Data is a massive building block of our digital age and the foundation behind databases will remain the same regardless of what language that is used.

What do you want to learn in this course that you think will be useful in your future career? 

I would like to learn and maybe master real world technologies like SQL with real world examples.