Computer Science E-66
Database Systems

Welcome!

The first lecture will be held on Tuesday, September 3, 2024 from 6:00-8:00 pm Eastern time. The course meets via web conference, and you will be able to access the lectures by going to the course’s site on Canvas. Students may attend at the scheduled meeting time or watch recorded sessions on demand. More information is available on the Lectures page.

Announcements are being made using Canvas. Make sure that you configure your Canvas account settings so that announcements will be emailed to you immediately; see Problem Set 0 for details. You can also find the archive of all of the announcements here.

Course information

Final exam

• To be taken during a 24-hour window starting Tuesday, December 17 at 6:00 PM Eastern and ending Wednesday, December 18 at 5:59 PM Eastern.
• Administered on Canvas using the Proctorio software.
• The exam will cover the entire semester, although details related to specific programming environments (e.g., Berkeley DB or Hadoop) will not be tested.
• You will be able to use a single 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper with handwritten notes on both sides.
• There are review problems in the coursepack that will be covered during the usual lecture time on December 10. We will post their solutions on Canvas.
• There will be no section meetings during the week of December 9 or the week of the final exam.

Midterm exam

• To be taken during a 24-hour window starting Tuesday, October 22 at 6:00 PM Eastern (the start of lecture) and ending Wednesday, October 23 at 5:59 PM Eastern.
• Administered on Canvas using the Proctorio software.
• The exam will cover the lecture notes from the beginning of the course through the lecture notes on Transactions and Schedules (up through page 137 in the coursepack). We won’t expect you to know fine-grained details like the Berkeley DB API, but we could ask you about higher-level concepts related to PS 2, Part II.
• You will be able to use a single 8.5-inch by 11-inch sheet of paper with handwritten notes on both sides.
• Practice exam (PDF). The practice exam is also available as a Canvas quiz so that you can see the test-taking environment with Proctorio.
• Additional review problems
• The guidelines for the actual exam will be the same as the ones found in the practice exam. The format of the actual exam will also be similar to the practice exam’s format.
• Solutions to the practice exam and review problems will be available on Canvas under Files -> Solutions as we get closer to the exam.

Course description

This course covers the fundamental concepts of database systems. Topics include data models (ER, relational, and others); query languages (relational algebra, SQL, and others); implementation techniques of database management systems (indexing structures, concurrency control, recovery, and query processing); management of semistructured and complex data; distributed and noSQL databases.

Instructor

Cody Doucette, Ph.D.

Prerequisites

Computer Science E-22 or the equivalent, and strong programming skills in Java.

Course Materials

• Computer Science E-66 coursepack. This will be available for download from the course website. More information will be given during the first lecture.

• Many of the optional readings come from the following textbook: Database Systems: The Complete Book (2nd edition) by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman, and Jennifer Widom (ISBN 978-0131873254, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009).

Last updated on December 2, 2024.