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Most Computer Information Systems programs require at least one database course for their majors. This paper describes a case study of a first database course in which multiple database platforms were introduced throughout the semester. The course was made more difficult in that half of the students had an extensive background in database design and the other half had no database background at all. This made the course even more challenging for the instructor. Students were first taught Microsoft Access while learning database basics including entity relationship diagrams (ERD). They then moved to MySQL for beginning SQL and finally learned Oracle and more complicated queries along with PL/SQL. Students were also expected to apply the traditional database concepts to actual database storage problems by creating an individual project using MySQL. Each database platform, Access, MySQL and Oracle presented various challenges to the students. This approach to teaching a beginning database course gave the students a great deal of SQL experience and allowed them to be more confident of their skills in that area. They were able to compare the programming of various tasks, such as triggers, using different platforms. They gained an appreciation for the similarities of the different platforms and were able to apply a concept learned on one database platform to another platform, something they will encounter in the real world after graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]