CPS 116 (Fall 2011):
Introduction to Database Systems

Index

• Course Description
• Staff
• Time and Place
• Books
• Web, Email, and Blackboard
• Accounts
• Grading
• Standards of Conduct

Instructor: Jun Yang
Web: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~junyang/
Email domain: cs.duke.edu, user: junyang (address is user@domain)
Office: D327 LSRC
Office hours: Tuesdays 4:05-5:00pm and Thursdays 1:30-2:50pm and 4:05-5:00pm, or by appointment

TA:
Web: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~rohit/
Email domain: cs.duke.edu, user: rohit (address is user@domain)
Office: D104 LSRC
Office hours: Mondays 2-3pm, Wednesdays 2-3pm, and Fridays 2-3pm

• Publisher's book page: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,3110,0131873253,00.html
• Amazon's book page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0131873253

Most of the course materials, including the syllabus, lecture notes, reading assignments, homeworks, programming FAQs, etc., will be available through the course Web page (http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/fall11/cps116/).

There is an email address that reaches everybody in the class as well as the instructor and the TA: domain: cs.duke.edu, user: cps116 (address is user@domain). Only announcements, questions/answers, and comments of general interests should be sent to this address. Specific questions should be directed to the instructor and the TA. Please check your emails regularly, as important announcements and information will be sent via email.

We will use the Blackboard course management system for grades.

We will provide a VirtualBox virtual machine image that you can use to complete all programming work in this course. You will need a computer to install VirtualBox so that you can run this image. If you do not own a computer, we can create an account for you on the dbcourse.cs.duke.edu server, which you can access via remote login using ssh. This account is only valid for the duration of the course, and will be purged when the semester is over. You will receive more information about the virtual machine image as well as dbcourse accounts during the second week of the class.

Parts of the homework assignments will be completed online on Gradiance, an online service pioneered by one of the authors of the textbook, Prof. Jeffrey Ullman at Stanford. One of the best features of Gradiance is that you are permitted to test yourself on a particular topic as many times as you like. You receive immediate feedback for each attempt, which avoids the shortcoming of the traditional submit-and-then-wait-for-grades assignments where one error in understanding can permeate solutions to multiple problems and does not get rectified until much later. We encourage you to continue testing on each topic until you complete the part of the assignment with a 100% score. Gradiance access is free. More information about getting Gradiance access will be available during the second week of the class.

Under the Duke Community Standard, you are expected to submit your own work in this course, including homeworks, projects, and exams. On many occasions when working on homeworks and projects, it is useful to ask others (the instructor, the TA, or other students) for hints or debugging help, or to talk generally about the written problems or programming strategies. Such activity is both acceptable and encouraged, but you must indicate in your submission any assistance you received. Any assistance received that is not given proper citation will be considered a violation of the Standard. In any event, you are responsible for understanding and being able to explain on your own all written and programming solutions that you submit. The course staff will pursue aggressively all suspected cases of violations, and they will be handled through official University channels.