CS 564 SECTION 1 / Fall 2009: Database Management Systems

Lectures: Tue/Thur 2:30-3:45pm, room 121, Psychology Building. Discussions: Wed 1:20-2:10pm, room 1221, Comp Science Building
Discussions will be used to discuss the project and to make up for certain lectures. Hence attending them is mandatory.

Note: Psychology Building is the one across W. Johnson St. from the CS building. You can use this map to find it.

Announcements

09/01: The first class is on Thur 09/03. No class on Wed 09/02. Make sure you are on the mailing list compsci564-1-f09@lists.wisc.edu.
09/01: Exam materials: 564 in Fall 2006 had two midterms. Here is the first one, and here is the second one. Here's sample final from Fall 06 in DOC. Here's the sample midterm from Fall 07. Note that the B+ tree figure is missing from the last question (probably the doc file was corrupted). However, it should still give you an idea on what's to be expected.

Important Dates
- Midterm exam: Tue Oct 27 in class, 75 min, closed book/note
- Final exam: 10:05am-12:05pm Sun, Dec 20, Room: CS 1325.
- No class on Thur Nov 26 (Thanksgiving), last class is Tue Dec 15.
Course Schedule is listed on a separate page.

Project Description - Fall 2009
Stage 1, ER design and translation: due Thur Sep 24 at 2:30 in class
Stage 2, SQL queries: due Tue Oct 6 at 2:30 in class
Stage 3-6, developing a mini DBMS

Staff
Instructor: AnHai Doan (contact information on my homepage). Office hours: Mon 2-3pm, Tue 4-5pm, Thur 4-5pm and by appointment, in CS 4355.
TAs: Yinan Li, yinan@cs.wisc.edu Office hours: Mon 11-12, Wed 3:30-4:30, Thur 11-12, in CS 3355.
Chong Sun, chong@cs.wisc.edu Office hours: Tue 11-12, Fri 2-3, in CS 1306.
Class Mailing List: compsci564-1-f09@lists.wisc.edu.
Course Description
CS 564 is intended to give students a solid background in database management systems, particularly relational database management systems. Such systems will be examined from two perspectives: that of a database system user, and that of a database system implementor.
Approximately half of the course material will focus on the use of database management systems. The concept of a data model will be introduced, the entity-relationship model will be covered, and then the relational data model and the SQL query language will be examined in detail. This part of the course will also cover logical and physical database design issues. Advanced features such as views and security will also be discussed briefly. Students will exercise their knowledge of this part of the course material by designing a small database and running queries.
The other half of the course will concentrate on the implementation of relational database management systems. Topics to be covered include file organizations, access methods (e.g., ISAM, B+ trees, linear and extendible hashing), external sorting techniques, the implementation of relational database operations, and the basic concepts of query optimization. Concurrency control, recovery, and other advanced implementation issues will also be touched upon as time allows. Associated with this part of the course will be a project involving the implementation of a fairly complete single-user relational database management system.
Although this is a two-part course, the presentation of the two parts will be interleaved in order to spread the course's programming work out as smoothly as possible over the whole semester.

Prerequisites
CS 367 is absolutely essential. CS 537 might be useful.
In addition, you should either know C++ and PHP or be willing to learn C++ and PHP for the course project. For C++, if you did not receive an A or AB in 367, or are unsure of your ability to learn a new language in the first few weeks of the semester, I strongly encourage you to postpone 564 until next semester and take CS368 this semester. If you still want to go ahead with 564 this semester, I suggest that that you immediately begin working through the on-line C++ course that you can find at CS368: C++ for Java Programmers.
Course Format
- Two 75-min lectures per week, and a discussion section that will take place most of the weeks (on Wednesdays).
- A midterm exam (date: TBD) and a final exam (date: 10:05am, Sun, Dec 20).
- A programming project with 5-6 stages. Details will be posted as the semester progresses.
- Possibly 1-2 homeworks that you should do to prepare for exams. They won't be graded.
Grade: midterm = 25%, final = 35%, project = 40%.
Classroom Rules
Cell phones must be turned off.
No laptops open.
There will be no make up exams.
Textbooks
Strongly recommended: "Database Management Systems", R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke, third edition, McGraw-Hill.
For a C++ book I recommend the book "A C++ Primer" by Stanley B. Lippman. If you already have a C++ reference book that you like do not buy this book.