Abstract

For thousands of years human being is keeping records outside their brain, or maintaining "databases" in one form or another. With the advent of stored programmable electronic computing machines it was quickly recognized that the computer's permanent memory is an excellent device for storing data. It is not only far more compact than anything human being has ever used before for data storage but it is also very efficient for the retrieval purpose. Gradually people realized that there is more to it than appeared initially and the community needs more understanding+standardization than just hacking with databases. Hence came the Database Management Systems. In this course we will learn some of the issues related to the current theory and practice around this field of computer science. We will particularly get exposed to the relational data model, the standardized language SQL, the design steps for a database in relational modeling technique, and some other related topics.

The syllabus is here. You may need ie to see this MS Word document, netscape may not be good.

The text book by Connolly and Begg has a web page linked from here.

Lecture slides of the chapters in zip format are available as "Chi.zip," where i stands for the chapter number, e.g., Ch01.zip for the first chapter. Note: These are copyrighted materials to the publisher/authors! Occasionally I have updated the slides myself.

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RESOURCES:

Database place from Addison-Wesley...

Some download information for software found by Terry Lentz, Jr. is here.

Some instructions related to oracle, here.
Log in as scott-tiger, not as DB Admin.

Some mySql specific issues.

Some sql examples are here, supplied by Dr. Becker.

Some sample questions will be maintained here.

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Spring 2003: The class room is Olin Life Science Bldg Rm 130.
Time: Monday-Wednesday 2-3:15 pm.

Project phases, link.

Assignment 1: on creating a real database, here.
Due: 2/26/03 in class. Mid Term (3/26/03, Wednesday) syllabus: Ch 5, 11, 12, and 13.

Final (4/29/03, Tuesday at 1-3 pm) syllabus: Ch 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 (only sections 5.2 and 5.3), and 19. Grades for the final.

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Old Spring 2002 materials below: IGNORE for Spring 2003

Spring 2002: The class room is Olin Biology Bldg Rm 130.

Assignment 2, on creating a real database, here.
Due: 2/25/02 in class.

First Quiz, link.

Project phases, link.

Syllabus for the final Spring 2002 is: Chs 5, 6, 11, 15, 16, 19 (begining through 19.2.5, then 19.2.7, 19.2.8, 19.3.1, 19.3.2) and from your Project.
The key.

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Old Fall 2001 materials below: IGNORE for Spring 2002

The final syllabus (Fall 2001):
Chapters 2, 3.3, 3.4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16,
your project,
19 up to 19.3 excluding: Latches, multiversion timestamp ordering, and granularity of data items.

Final.

First assignment on the relational algebra, here.

First assignment on using SQL, here.

The project phases are under development here.

The first quiz.

The Midterm.

The Final.

The mid-term is on Thursday, November 13, 2001; from: Ch 5, 6, 11, 13, and 15.

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E-mail: dmitra@zach.fit.edu