Please read this document! It will answer many questions about the conduct of the course.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites for this course are 198:205 Discrete Structures I (or equivalent), for knowledge of logic; and 198:112 Data Structures, for data access techniques (hashing, search trees).

Course Goals

We will communicate with you mostly through the Sakai system, though information about the project, tools, etc. may be maintained on a web page.

Books

• Database Management Systems, R.Ramakrishnan and M.Gehrke, 3rd edition !!!,McGraw-Hill, 2003 (This book covers a surprisingly broad range of topics beyond DBMS, including some XML, Information Retrieval and Data Mining)
• BUT considerable material will be covered which is not in books. Students are responsible for knowing all the material covered in lectures, and class attendance will be taken.
• Supplementary class material will be placed on reserve at the SEC Reading Room (on Busch Campus) during the term or posted on Sakai Resources; you will be informed of these in lecture or on your class webpage.

The following authors also publish standard and excellent textbooks on database systems; these are widely used at other universities. In case you want to read alternate expositions, the ones marked with @ are available at SEC Reading Room on 2-hour loan, together with the official textbook of the course:

• "Database systems: concepts, languages, and architectures", P. Atzeni, S. Ceri, S. Praboschi, R. Torlone. (Excellent coverage of conceptual modeling, requirements, schema design. Unfortunately, out of print.)
• @ J.Ullman and J.Widom (which is Volume 1 of the 2-volume Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom). If this book had material on querying XML and information retrieval, it would have been my choice for a text, since it is also focused on non-implementation view of databases. The accompanying web sites are outstanding! You are strongly encouraged to browse around to see what is available (lecture slides, excercises, exams, Oracle info,...)
• @ "Fundamentals of Database Systems", R.Elmasri and S.Navathe. Extensive coverage of conceptual modeling using Extended Entity Relational model and UML.
• @ "Database System Concepts", A.Silebrschatz, H.Korth and S.Sudharshan
• @ "Database systems: an application oriented approach", M.Kifer, A. Bernstein, P.Lewis. Addison-Wesley, 2006

PREAMBLE: There are a lot of rigid-sounding "rules of the game" listed below. Please understand that it does not give us pleasure to impose them, but that with class size almost doubling to 70, the number of exceptions, special cases, administratrivia, etc. rise to the point that they threaten to take over our teaching life, which we actually want to dedicate to educating you as much as possible about the subject matter. Please keep in mind this goal, and we thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

WHO TO CONTACT:

• Professor Borgida (borgida@cs): Concerning subject matter, (including lecture material and notes), clarrifications concerning assignments and projects concepts, before submission; personal difficulties.
• Jongpil Kim: recitation, homework assignments
• Vignesh Radhakrishnan: systems questions/aspects and the project implementation (mySQL, jsp, etc.)
• TAs: grading issues

Attendance Policy

• Since I often present material that does not appear in the textbook (e.g., on Datalog), and the TA will take up examples and homework solutions, which will not be posted, it is really important for you to attend lectures and recitations. To encourage this, we will pass around sign up sheets, and I will take up to 5% of the final grade and use it at my discretion, based on attendance and class participation.

  Students who miss a lecture are expected to obtain lecture notes from class/team-mates, as well as any posted material and readings. They are of course welcome to see me if they have questions with clarifications.

• Special arangments, especially for exams, will be made for only the most serious emergencies (which will need to be documented by officials such as doctors or the police).

  In emergency situations, when you are unable to get to the exam, it is your responsibility to contact your instructor before the exam and notify them of the situation. Alternate arrangements will be made for people with documented difficulties. ALL STUDENTS ARE EXPECTED TO TAKE THE EXAMS AT THEIR SCHEDULED TIME, UNLESS THEY HAVE NOTIFIED THEIR INSTRUCTOR AT LEAST A WEEK IN ADVANCE OF A UNIVERSITY-RECOGNIZED CONFLICT, AND ALTERNATE ARRANGEMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE .

• The policy for late Assignment submissions is described below,

Examinations

There will be at least two exams: one before the Spring break and a somewhat longer one at the end of the course. (An alternative is that two midterms are in class, and the final is shorter than the usual 3 hours.) Each exam will contain questions referring to knowledge gained from the homework assignments and programming project, as well as lectures. Therefore, if you do not do the assignments, you will find it difficult to answer these questions. The last exam will cover the material for the whole course. Unless otherwise announced, all tests will be closed book.
   

Homeworks

• There will be bi-weekly homework assignments, though they may be handed out in more frequent fragments. Homeworks will be spot checked during the semester (this means that not all questions will be graded) >Please do this homework! It is intended to aid you in learning the material. We will use material related to your homework on the tests.
• Solutions will be discussed in recitation, but not posted. (This is, in part, to encourage recitation attendance.)
• A late submission may be negotiated with the instructor (it is not automatic), but in no case will this be accepted more than 46 hours after the due date or after solutions have been posted or discussed (whichever is earlier) and a 30% penalty will be applied to late assignments.  Repeated late submissions will be considered as a sign of neglicence and will result in the rejection of future late assignments. (The poit is that we do not want you to get into the habit of postponing these homeworks when some other class has an absolute deadline.)

Project

    The programming project will be graded principally on functionality, so fancy flashy graphics will not earn extra points (though you may find them a way to make the work more fun).
    More details about the project topic (a program to assist professors in giving special permission numbers to students) will be discussed in lecture. Recitations will cover programming aspects, including JSP, generating XML, etc.

Submission via Sakai

• Homework and project assignments will be submitted via Sakai usually.
• Please be sure to press the SUBMIT button in sakai when you upload the file. It is your resonsibility to make sure afterwards that the material is uploaded, and we will not change grades later if something is missing.
  
• We can only accept ASCii text or pdf submissions, since our computers often do not have software to read other kinds of documents.

Grading Scheme

Course grades will be based on your performance on the exams, homeworks and project. In order to pass the course, a student needs to pass at least one exam, and have a running project. Our tentative grade weights are: 225 points midterm, 325 points final, 300 points for the programming project, and 150 for written homeworks. We reserve the right to adjust these weights as necessary during the term, and, as noted above, up to 5% of your grade may determined by class attendance/participation and other "intangibles"..
    Your achievement according to this weighting constitutes a raw score. Once the scores are in, the class curve will serve as the basis on which letter grades will be awarded. We will keep you abreast of the median grades, and quartiles for the class, so that you have some idea of where you stand; remember, an average grade at RU is C.

Policy on grading:

GENERAL

• In giving final grades (esp.low ones, but also at boundaries) I consider each case carefully on its merits, including revisiting the final exam, the project and assignments, their grading, and what knowledge they indicate. Some other things that make me positively inclined are attendance in class and recitation. (Some things that make me negatively inclined are failing to attend classes, failing to submit assignments, or copying on these.)
• If you have problems during the course, I strongly encourage you to come talk to me. (In fact, I welcome the opportunity to talk to all students outside the class.) To be fair to other students, current and past, unfortunately we have to be entirely consistent, and stick to a longstanding policy we've evolved of denying requests to change final grades, even by doing additional work. The only exceptions to this are based on letters from the Dean. (I regret having to start with such a blunt message, but past experience ...)

SPECIFIC

• Grades are kept in a spreadsheet, not on Sakai/Gradebook (which does not have enough features and is too rigid.)
• You will be given a chance to see all the grades we have recorded for you at the end of the term, when they will be uploaded to sakai, on Post'Em
• On some assignments you will receive written comments and grades on paper. These grades will not be posted to sakai. On the other assignments, the initial grades will also be uploaded to Post'Em. However, any changes to those are made only to the spreadsheet.
• If there is a question about a grade (whether homework or test), please write a note, withing a week of it having been given back, describing precisely what the problem is, and email it together with a copy of the homework to BOTH TAs; the one who did the grading will look at it and respond eventually in writing. Please avoid verbal arguments concerning grades - they are not productive.
  
• Moreover, please try to keep a perspective: there will be between 7 and 9 homeworks, which are currently slated to be worth around 15% of the grade. That means that each homework is worth probably less than 2% of the grade, and when you are arguing for 1 point out of 10, that makes it less than 0.2% of the grade. I can guarantee that no one's letter grade will depend on such a small difference.
  

Phew! With that out of the way, let's go learn about "meaty" stuff!