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California State University Stanislaus

CS 4250: Database Management Systems

Spring 2023

9:30 - 10:45 am, Tu Thu, DBH 104. Dr. Megan Thomas

[Syllabus ]        [Announcements]        [Calendar/Lecture Notes]        [Homeworks]        [Resources]        [Fun News]

Welcome to CS4250, an introduction to database management systems. Topics include:

Modeling, development, and implementation of database systems using storage structures, data definition languages, and data manipulation languages for the relational approach to database management. Database integrity and security problems. Historical development of database systems.

Prerequisite: CS 3100.

Announcements and Upcoming Events

21 May 2023	Here is one small chunk of the final exam you will take on Tuesday at 8:30 am.
11 May 2023	On Tuesday, May 16th, from 3-5 pm, we are going to hold the twelfth annual College of Sciences Student Poster Celebration! The celebration will be located in the hallways of Naraghi, mostly in the lobby and the area by the Commons. FREE FOOD and beverages will be available, courtesy of the College of Science. Friends, family, and young relatives who haven't pick a college major yet are VERY welcome. CS 4250 students can earn extra credit by visiting, talking with the student scientists, and filling out a form. (I'll have copies of the form in class.)
23 Mar 2023	Here is one small chunk of the midterm you will take on Thursday during class time.
21 Mar 2023	From today's in-class discussions: Homework 2 solutions work movie "table" decomposition work "How many jobs are available in technology in the US?" (Computerworld, 10 Mar 2023) "Best Tech Careers for 2023" (Baselinemag.com, 15 Mar 2023)
7 Mar 2023	A classmate helpfully found instructions on how to install a VPN for our campus network, which would let you access the CS website from off-campus. See "How do I get access and start using VPN?" here: Information Security, CSU Stanislaus or skip straight to: Windows: Global Protect VPN Guide - Windows or Mac: Global Protect VPN Guide - Mac. And, just for fun: "IT jobs in 2023: Look before you leap" (Feb 21, 2023, InfoWorld) "10 Hardest IT Jobs to Fill" (Mar 1, 2023, InformationWeek)
2 Mar 2023	From our in-class exercise work this week: Schema: Earthquake (qname, qdate, latitude, longitude, magnitude, fault) Damage(cityID, qname, cost, liveslost) Cities(cID, cname, latitude, longitude, population) [city names may not be unique] Questions (in SQL, and relational algebra where possible): Find the names and dates of earthquakes whose magnitude was greater than 7.0. Find the average population of all the cities whose names start with "San". List the lives lost, quake names and city names for all quakes that occurred before 1960. List the city identifiers and total cost, per city, of all quakes with magnitude greater than 7.0. List the average magnitude of quakes for each fault (grouped by fault). List all earthquakes and, where applicable, also list city IDs and lives lost in that city for quakes that affected cities. List the names of cities whose populations are greater than the average city population.
27 Jan 2023	Career Fair on Wednesday, 3/1, 1:00 PM-4:00 PM, at the Event Center. (Some preparation events before then, to help with resume creation, etc.) Career Center Events, Spring 2023
26 Jan 2023	Welcome to CS 4250!

Homeworks

Project Overview

	Points
Project Part 1	20
Project Part 2	25 + 6
Homework 1	30
Project Part 3	20
Homework 2	30
Project Part 4	10
Project Part 5	25
Homework 3	30
Project Part 6	12
Homework 4	35
Project Part 7	70

Books at the CSU Stanislaus Library

• Database Systems: The Complete Book by Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom, three extremely well-respected database researchers and professors at Stanford University.
• Database Management Systems by Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gherke, excellent, systems-oriented introduction to the field of database management.
• Database Tuning by Dennis Sasha and Philippe Bonet. A clear presentation of how database design decisions impact database performance. Also discusses IBM, Oracle and Microsoft systems and how design choices can impact them.
• Readings in Database Systems by M. Stonebraker. A collection of influential papers in DBMS research history.
• Computer Science & Information Systems from the CSU Stanislaus Library -- easiest link to reach the Safari TechBooks collection, where many books about SQL, etc, can be found. (You'll need your CSU Stanislaus student credentials to log in.)

The Ramakrishnan and Garcia-Molina/Ullman/Widom textbooks are both available at the university library.

Campus Resources

• Career and Professional Development Center --- and Career Center Event Schedule
• CSU Stanislaus Dreamers: Resources for AB540 and undocumented students
• Disability Resource Services
• Useful campus resource links, courtesy the Learning Commons

DBMS Resources

• IBM's DB2, etc
• MySQL
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Microsoft SQL Server
• SQLite
  • 'cd' (Unix/Mac) or 'chdir' (Windows/ Command Prompt) your command line window into whatever folder you put the files you downloaded and unzipped, and type ./sqlite3 (Unix/Mac) or .\sqlite3 (Windows) and the SQLite command line tool should start up.
  • I've put the start-up file of SQL commands here. I usually copy-and-paste the ch5-demo.sql file's contents into the sqlite3 command prompt. (There is an import command, but it has occasionally behaved oddly for me.)
  • Basic instructions for the command line SQLite are here.
• SQLFiddle.com -- a web site that allows uers to "fiddle around" with SQL.
• JDBC Tutorial, courtesy Jeff Ullman
• JDBC Tutorial, courtesy Oracle
• MySQL Tutorial - pure tutorial web site
• Execute PHP MySQL On-line, a PHP testing facility provided by http://www.tutorialspoint.com/
• XML Tutorial, courtesy w3schools.com
• XML Tutorial, courtesy zvon.com
• Phlonx's Third Normal Form Tutorial, with numerous illustrative diagrams
• Lynda.com's databases-related courses -- all videos. You would need to authenticate yourself as a CSU Stanislaus student to view the videos.
• XKCD on SQL
• "Hard drive teardown", EngineerGuy video
• Podcast: "Where the Internet Lives", 2020-2021. A Google-centric view into the insides of data centers, and interviews with assorted people who work at them. May give you insights into possible future careers.
• "Episode 485: Howard Chu on B+tree Data Structure in Depth", from the Software Engineering Radio podcast -- a one hour introduction to the most popular data structure in database systems
• For more information on ...
  • ... the ARIES recovery algorithm, the paper to read is "ARIES: a transaction recovery method supporting fine-granularity locking and partial rollbacks using write-ahead logging", which someone already put online on the Stanford web site.
    C. Mohan, Don Haderle, Bruce Lindsay, Hamid Pirahesh, and Peter Schwarz. 1992. ARIES: a transaction recovery method supporting fine-granularity locking and partial rollbacks using write-ahead logging. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 17, 1 (March 1992), 94-162. https://doi.org/10.1145/128765.128770
  • ... "optimistic locking techniques vs strict two-phase locking", the paper to read is "Concurrency control performance modeling: alternatives and implications", which someone put online on the UCBerkeley web site.
    Rakesh Agrawal, Michael J. Carey, and Miron Livny. 1987. Concurrency control performance modeling: alternatives and implications. ACM Trans. Database Syst. 12, 4 (Dec. 1987), 609-654. https://doi.org/10.1145/32204.32220
  • I know of a nice introduction to ARIES written by Mike Franklin but, tragically, it was published in a book that we have no access to.

Fun News Articles and Podcasts

• "The top 10 most-regretted college majors - and the degrees graduates wish they had pursued instead", CNBC.com, 12 Nov 2022
• "The best states in the US for tech jobs", Computerworld, 20 Oct 2022.
• "Developer jobs: Nearly a third of top tech roles remain empty, say recruiters: Despite hiring freezes and layoffs, companies of all sizes need software professionals - and there simply aren't enough to go around", ZDNet, 20 Oct 2022.
• "Top 10 Data Science Jobs that will Rise to Prominence in 2022", (AnalyticsInsight.net, 18 Nov 2021)
• "4 strategies for managing your job search anxiety" (Fast Company, 4 May 2021)
• Podcast episode: "Episode 454: Thomas Richter on Postgres as an OLAP database" (IEEE Software Engineering Radio, 8 Apr 2021). Listen to this towards the end of a semester, when you will know more of the DBMS vocabulary.
• "50 Technology Skills That Remote Employers Want", Dice.com, December 2020
• "Under the Hood at Google and Facebook: A peek at the data centers, servers, and software that keep us feeling connected" IEEE Spectrum, June 2011.
• Database Normalization for the Real World: nice article walking one through the steps of database normalization, with larger- than- can- fit- on- a- PowerPoint- slide relation examples.