DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS, 2nd ed.

Courses for Which the Book is Suitable

BY ITSELF: The book is well-suited for a first or second course that stresses concepts, and takes an example-driven, quantitative approach. The example-based, detailed coverage of database design, in particular physical database design, makes it a good choice for a first course in database systems. The extensive coverage of storage and indexing techniques makes it suitable for a first course in file systems, with an introduction to databases. The thorough treatment of concurrency control, recovery, parallel and distributed databases, and advanced topics such as deductive and active databases, object-databases and decision support make it suitable for a second course.

WITH MINIBASE: The MINIBASE relational DBMS software has been developed in conjunction with this book, and is available freely via ftp; it runs on many versions of Unix.

The software can be used to support a course that emphasizes concepts, and has no implementation projects, by creating exercises and experiments that involve no programming. (Example exercises and solutions available.)

WITH MINIBASE: The book is ideal for a course that has a strong systems emphasis and assumes that students have good programming skills in C and C++; it has been used for several semesters at Wisconsin and elsewhere for such a course. In this case, the software can be used as the basis for implementation projects in which students are asked to implement various parts of a relational DBMS. (Example projects and solutions available.)