Syllabus          CS 333/533: Data Base Management Systems       Spring 2010

Margaret Menzin         Office:S209                                                                          Phone: X2704
                                         Email: menzin@simmons.edu             Home Phone: 781-862-5107

                                         Office Hours: Mon 7:30-11:00; and sometimes after 5:00
                                                                   Wed 9:00-11:00 and 1:30-3:30, often later;
                                                                   Fri 7:30-11:00 and by appointment after 1:30
                                          Note: There is no class on Wed. March 31, 2010. This class will be made up.

Students with Disabilities: Reasonable accommodations will be provided for students with documented physical, sensory, systemic, cognitive, learning, and psychiatric disabilities. If you have a disability and anticipate that you will need a reasonable accommodation in this class, it is important that you contact the Academic Support Center Director at 617.521.2471 early in the semester. Students with disabilities receiving accommodations are also encouraged to contact their instructors within the first 2 sessions of the semester to discuss their individual needs for accommodations."

Organization of the course

Grading:

There will be group and individual assignments throughout the course and one test.
All major assignments and the test at the end of the second unit count equally.Smaller ones will count as an announced percent of a major one.

 

Syllabus

Text: Kroenke, Database Processing 11^th edition (Pearson Prentice Hall)

Required: Student Membership in the ACM for on-line reading from their site.

 

Unit 1: Introduction to Database Systems

Ch. 1 Kroenke and other readings

What is a database? What kinds of operations does a database support (CRUD)? What kinds of databases are there and how have they evolved? What kinds of issues do we consider in database design (e.g. access, integrity, consistency, recovery from errors etc.)

 

Unit 2: Introduction to SQL

Ch. 2 Kroenke and other readings

SQL, or Structured Query Language, is the lingua franca for querying databases. We will look at it first using Access (part of Microsoft Office) and then using MySQL, an open source database product. While we are looking at Access we will also learn how to use its graphical interface which implements QBE (Query By Example).

The ACM site and other sites will provide our documentation and tutorials for MySQL.

 

Unit 3: Database Design and Normalization

Ch. 3-7 Kroenke and readings from the ACM and other sites

How do we decide if our database should have many small relations or one large one? How do we design a database so that it will not be vulnerable to various kinds of anomalies?

This Unit, which is the major part of the course, will include more advanced use of SQL and also designing web interfaces for querying dataases and presenting the results of these database queries (thru perl or php.)

 

Unit 4: Global Issues and Future Directions in DBMS

Ch. 9, 13, 14 of Kroenke and other reading

We revisit the general issues of Unit 1 and discuss them from a more informed point of view.
Finally, after a very brief discussion of XML, we turn to the question of the relationship between database systems and XML.