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California State University Stanislaus

CS 4250: Database Management Systems

Fall 2022

3:00 - 3:50 pm, M W F, S 137. Dr. Megan Thomas

Syllabus Sections

Contacting Dr. Thomas

Email mthomas@cs.csustan.edu  Put "CS4250" in the subject line of the email.

Textbook (required)

The required text for the class is: Databases Illuminated, 3rd ed by C. Ricardo and S.D. Urban. ('Navigate 2 Advantage Access' offered by publishers is not necessary.)

Alternative book, also ok: Databases Illuminated, 4th ed by C. Ricardo and S.D. Urban.

In some past semesters, students found that our class textbook was available in our library's electronic books collection. Visit Safari Tech Books Online from our library web site. Some students succeeded in going directly to https://learning.oreilly.com/ and searching for 'Databases Illuminated'.

Student Requirements and Responsibilities

Your primary responsibility is to be an active, engaged, prepared participant in the course. There will be quite a bit of reading which will require your consistent attention. Learning and understanding are active, not passive processes. You will have to take responsibility for your own learning, and you will be expected to contribute to other's learning also. Part of your learning will involve expressing yourself, in writing and verbally.

Other specific requirements:

Grading


The final grade weighting of student work is estimated in the table below.  The final weights should be close to those in the table, but circumstances may arise during the semester that force reweighting.  (For example, if one of the exams proves unusually difficult, the instructor may reduce the weight of that exam and weight the other exam higher.)

There are three major components to student grades in this class: 1) exams, 2) individual assignments, and 3) assignments completed as a group. If a student does not demonstrate a minimal level of competence in each and all of the three components, this is grounds for assigning an F or NC in the class.

Strong evidence from multiple sources that a student did not participate significantly in multiple parts of the group project is grounds to assign zero out up to 20% of the entire Assignments portion of that student's grade.

CR/NC grading may be requested only by filing a form in MSR by the appropriate deadline. See the Enrollment Services web page for more information about deadlines.


Quizzes, Midterm, Final Exam 7, 7, 15, 15%
Homeworks and Programming Assignments 50%
Class participation, pop quizzes, extra credit, etc 6%
100%

A plus and minus grading scale will be used for final grades.

Academic Honesty

The work you do for this course will be your own. You are not to submit other people's work and represent it as your own.

Students who violate this policy will receive no credit on the assignment, may receive an "F" in the course (at the instructor's discretion), and a report will be sent to the university Office of Student Affairs.

Late Days

Each student gets an automatic extension of 4 calendar days. You can use the extension on any programming or homework assignment(s) during the semester (in increments that are rounded up to the nearest integer). For instance, you can hand in one assignment 4 days late, or each of four assignments 1 day late. When you hand in a late assignment, you must identify in the README file the following: (i) how late this assignment is, and (ii) how much of the total slip time you have left. No assignment will be accepted more then 4 days late. After you have used up your slip time, any assignment handed in late will be marked off 25% per day. There will be no extensions granted.

If a group uses a Late Day on a project part, that will "cost" each member of the group one individual Late Day.