CPS 216: Advanced Database Systems
(Spring 2004)

Course Information
Lecture Notes
Assignments
Tentative Syllabus
Programming Notes
Blackboard (Grades)

Index


Course Description

This course covers advanced database management system design principles and techniques. The course materials will be drawn from both classic and recent research literature. Possible topics include access methods, query processing and optimization, transaction processing, distributed databases, object-oriented and object-relational databases, data warehousing, data mining, Web and semistructured data, search engines, etc. Programming projects are required.

Prerequisites: An introductory database course or consent of instructor.


Time and Place

2:15pm-3:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays; D243 LSRC


Books

Reference: Database Systems: The Complete Book, by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Jennifer Widom. Prentice Hall. 2002.

Optional: Readings in Database Systems, 3rd Edition, edited by Michael Stonebraker and Joseph M. Hellerstein. Morgan Kaufman. 1998.


Staff

Instructor: Jun Yang
Web:
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~junyang/
Email: junyang@cs.duke.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays right after the lecture, or by email appointment

TA: Chip Killian
Web: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~ckillian/
Email: ckillian@cs.duke.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:00am-12:00pm


Web, H2O, Newsgroup, and Blackboard

Most of the course materials, including the syllabus, lecture notes, reading assignments, homeworks, programming FAQ's, etc., will be available through the course Web page (http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/spring04/cps216/).

We will be using the H2O system for reviewing and discussing research papers. Make sure that you register with H2O and join the Duke CPS216 project. You can then post your reviews by participating in appropriate H2O rotisseries.

The newsgroup duke.cs.cps216 is useful for posting questions that are likely to be of interest to the rest of the class. We very much encourage students in the class to post responses to questions. We will monitor the the newsgroup regularly, and post responses to questions that have not previously been asked or answered. Before posting a question, please do make sure that you have read all previous messages and that your question has not yet been discussed.

We will use the Blackboard course management system (https://courses.duke.edu/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_13151_1&frame=top) for grades.


Grading

Reading Assignments11%
Homeworks24%
Presentation (optional)6% (see below)
Project25%
Midterm20%
Final20%

There are weekly reading assignments, to be posted in the Assignments section of the course Web site as the course progresses. Some of the reading assignments require you to write short reviews.

There are four homeworks, with a mix of written and programming problems. Late homeworks will not be graded.

Optionally, students in groups of two can conduct a 75-minute presentation on recent research papers. This presentation can be used to replace one of the lowest homework grades. A sign-up sheet for the presentations will be available in the third week of the class.

There is a course project (done either individually or in groups of two). Details will be available in the Assignments section of the course Web site by the third week of the class.

Both midterm and final exams are open-book and open-notes.


Honor Code

Under the Duke Honor Code, 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 Honor Code. 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 Honor Code violations, and they will be handled through official University channels.

Last updated Tue Jan 06 20:25:18 EST 2004