Course Overview - Database Systems Syllabus, Schedule, Course Content

Course Overview Storage of and access to physical databases including indexing, hashing, and range accesses. Relational data models, database design principles, query languages, query optimization, transaction processing and recovery techniques. Object-oriented and distributed databases.

Warning: It will be LOT of programming! Why should you care? Databases draw together all of the theory and techniques that you’ve learned about in most of your previous computer science courses. You will learn how to write a database system to solve the kinds of problems you may face in a career as a programmer. You will gain a deeper understanding of how databases work and be able to write better code using them. Warning: It will be LOT of programming!

Who am I? Dr. Joshua Nahum Teaching Specialist for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering You can call me "Josh".

Online Enabled Course All material with be provided to you via the website and related sources. No textbook. Synchronized course (meaning material for the class will be released week by week). Doing well in this class requires more self-discipline than in-person classes, so seek help if you fall behind.

Grading 50% - Projects 20% - Homeworks 30% - Exam Projects: There will be 6 projects totaling 50% of your final grade. Homeworks: There will be at least 12 homeworks; the top 10 homeworks will each count for 2% of your grade. Exams: There will be a single in-person exam on about 2/3 of the way through the semester.

Projects Most of the projects will be building an increasing complex Database Management System, which can respond to SQL queries. All of the projects must be done independently, meaning you need to write and understand every line of code you submit. You may ask questions on Piazza or to other students, but you may not share code. Please come to office hours if you need assistance. Projects will be due at 10pm on their due date. Late projects will lose 1 point of the grade per 24 hours. No project can be more than 4 days late. At the end of the semester, two of the late penalty points accrued will be waived.

Homeworks Homeworks will be done through HackerRank.com and are due at 10pm on Tuesdays. You should receive a personalized link to the assignment each Friday. There will be at least 12 homeworks assigned, but only the top 10 highest homework grades will be used. The others will be dropped. There is no late period for homeworks. If you haven't submitted the assignment by 10pm, you receive a 0.0.

Academic Honesty Do your own work! You may use the web as a resource as long as you give credit and don’t try to pawn off your work on someone else. Do not copy another student's code or exam answers, use code implemented by someone else, use code independently implemented by someone else, provide false information to the instructor about matters related to the course, or facilitate another student in any of these activities. We will be using plagiarism detection software. Violation of these rules will result in a final grade of 0.0.

Prerequisite Knowledge Ability to write classes and functions in Python 3. Ability to use the Unix command line and ssh What we will cover: Using databases (SQL) Implementing a simple database system Comparing different database systems (NoSQL)

Recommended Textbook Database Systems: The Complete Book by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Jennifer Widom Entirely optional but it is a good resource for the content covered in this course.

Late Policy Which of these can be turned in late? Projects Homeworks Exam