UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

CS448/648

Introduction to Database Management

Winter 2001

Instructors:
M. Tamer Özsu
Lectures:
TR 10:00 - 11:30, MC 4042
Office Hrs.: 
T 1:30 - 3:00, R 9:00 - 9:45, or by appointment
Office: 
DC 3121, x6847 (only very urgent matters) 
Email:
tozsu@db.uwaterloo.ca
Frank Wm. Tompa
Lectures:
TR 2:30 - 4:00, MC 4042
Office Hrs: 
M 9-11, W 1-2, or by appointment
Office: 
DC 1313, x4567 
Email: 
fwtompa@db.uwaterloo.ca
Teaching Assistants:
Paul Lo
Office Hrs:
T 12:30-1:30, R 4-5, or by appointment
Office: 
DC 3335C, x5896
Email:
ccplo@math.uwaterloo.ca
:
 
Lubomir Stanchev
Office Hrs: 
F 1-2, or by appointment
Office:
DC3120, x4714
 Email:
lp2stanc@math.uwaterloo.ca
 
On-Line Information:
Course home page: http://db.uwaterloo.ca/~tozsu/courses/c448
Course newsgroup: uw.cs.cs448
RequiredTextbook:
R. Ramakrishnan and J. Gehrke, Database Management Systems, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill, 2000.
Other References:
J. Ullman and J. Widom, A First Course in Database Systems, Prentice-Hall, 1997. 
H. Garcia-Molina, J. Ullman, and J. Widom, Database System Implementation, Prentice-Hall, 1999. 
A. Silberschatz, H. Korth, and S. Sudarshan, Database System Concepts, 3rd edition, McGraw-Hill, 1997. 
Corequisite: CS 354 and fourth-year standing in a Computer Science Major program.
Evaluation

CS 448 CS 648
Assignments 25% 20%
Midterm 35% 25%
Final 40% 40%
Project 15%

For each of the above, there will be a deadline for appealing your grade. No appeals will be considered after this deadline unless there is a medical or other excuse for absence during the appeal period.

Instances of academic dishonesty will be penalized according to CS policy.

Late assignments will be accepted for 48 hours after the due date. For the first 24 hours, there will be a 5% penalty and for the second 24 hours, there will be further 5% penalty. No assignments will be accepted after 48 hours.

The midterm exam will be in EL 211 on Monday, February 19 from 7-9 p.m.The final exam will be scheduled by the Office of the Registrar. To pass the course, a student must have a passing weighted average on the examinations.

Objectives

The main objective of this course is to study databases from four viewpoints, in particular, those of the database user, the database designer, the database manager, and the database system implementer. This will be achieved by focusing on three fundamental sub-objectives:

  1. To understand the principles of relational database management systems and their languages ñ in particular SQL.
  2. To learn the methodology for building applications on top of database management systems ó the so-called data modeling process.
  3. To investigate the internal operations of relational database management systems.

For more information, please consult the handbook description: http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/CS_Dept/undergrad/handbook/cDescr/CS448.html

Complementing the above objectives, students will work with a state-of-the-art commercial DMBS. The system that we will use is DB2, which will be presented briefly in one lecture. Learning DB2 is your responsibility. You can find on-line information on DB2 at http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~cs448/db2_doc/html/ and http://www.student.math.uwaterloo.ca/~cs448/db2_doc/html/db2s0/frame3.htm#index

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Last updated 7 December 2000