CMSC 724: Advanced Topics in Database Systems

• News: Good luck on the final!

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• Class meetings: Fridays 9:00am to 11:30am; CSI 2118. (CSI is the new building next to AVW and is absent on many campus maps.)

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• Class newsgroup: csd.cmsc724 (local to umd.edu). We'll use this newsgroup for announcements and discussions. Please post questions and comments to this newsgroup (instead of emailing them to the instructor) unless there is a good reason for keeping your comments private. This newsgroup is required reading for this course, and posting messages to the newsgroup counts as class participation.

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• Instructor: Sudarshan S. Chawathe
  • Email: chaw@cs.umd.edu
    Please put the string "CMSC724" near the beginning of the Subject header for all 724-related email.
  • Office hours: Tuesdays 2:00pm-3:00pm, Fridays 11:30am-12:00pm and 1:00pm-2:00pm, or by appointment.
  • Office: AVW 3229.

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• Description: The primary goal of this course is to serve as a stepping stone from database coursework to database research. A secondary goal is to cover advanced topics in database systems. The topics this semester will have four foci: (1) essentials of database systems implementation; (2) database theory and its applications; (3) semistructured data management; and (4) stream data processing. The textbooks and reading list should give you a rough idea of the kind of material we will cover. The topics are likely to change based on student feedback.

  This course requires a substantial semester-long project. The project must include a nontrivial implementation and must culminate in a project demonstration and a submission of source code and a project report. For an A grade, the project work and report should be comparable in quality to a good workshop paper (and hopefully better). I will help in the selection and conduct of the project; however, primary responsibility for the project lies with the students (who are responsible for scheduling meetings to ensure their work is on track). The projects will be individual work by default; however, I may permit group projects if there is a compelling case for them. The exams will be take-home (and thus open book). The homeworks will most likely be a mix of programming and written work.

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• Readings:
  • Reading List and Approximate Schedule (check for updates): HTML; PDF; PostScript.
  • Textbooks:
    • Database Systems: The Complete Book by Garcia-Molina, Ullman, and Widom. Prentice Hall, 2002.
    • Data on the Web: From Relations to Semistructured Data and XML by Abiteboul, Buneman, and Suciu. Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.
    • Foundations of Databases by Abiteboul, Hull, and Vianu. Addison Wesley, 1995.

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• Homeworks and Exams: I'll post material here as we go along. Take a look at last session's Web pages for a rough idea of what to expect.
  • Homework 1: PDF; PostScript.
  • Midterm exam: PDF; PostScript.
  • Homework 2: PDF; PostScript.
  • Final exam (available after 5:00pm 16 May 2003): PDF; PostScript.

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• Grading: Grading is based on class participation (10%), class summaries (10%), homeworks (10%), a mid-term exam (15%), a final exam (20%), and a project (35%).

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• Policies: Please make sure you read and follow the class policy.

Last modified: Wed Mar 19 17:56:52 EST 2003

Unless otherwise noted, all documents in the http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2003/cmsc724/ hierarchy are Copyright © 1999--2003 Sudarshan S. Chawathe.