News:

Midterm

Instructor:

Amol Deshpande (Homepage)

Meeting Time and Place:

Tu-Th 12:30-1:45, CSIC 3120

Office Hours:

Tuesday 2-3pm, AVW 3221, or by appointment.

Approach:

This course covers advanced topics in Database Management systems, with a blend of classic and ongoing research. We will cover some of the classic papers in the area in the first half, and focus on more recent work in the second half. About 3/4th of the class will be presentations by me, though I expect these to be heavily interactive. You will be asked to do one in-class presentation toward the end.

Textbook: Readings in Database Systems, by Hellerstein and Stonebraker, MIT Press, 4th Edition, 2004.

List of the papers in the book. This is a compilation of papers in the Database area, but also contains some very nice overview chapters at the beginning. The papers themselves are mostly available on the web, but the overview chapters and other material from the book is not; I would strongly encourage that you get a copy of this book. About 2/3rd of the class will be from the book, and the rest of the class will be on recent papers from major DB conferences.

The course counts towards the Database area's requirements for PhD core, MS comps, and MS coursework.

Course Grading

The grading will be based on class participation and paper critiques (10%), two take-home exams (40%), one in-class presentation (10%), and a class project (40%).

Prerequisites

CMSC 424 or equivalent.

Topics

Following the structure of the textbook, here is a "rough" list of the topics we will cover in the class; this list will be finalized, and most likely changed, as we go along. The list of papers at the book webpage.