Teaching

Courses and Descriptions

Current and upcoming courses:

• Fall 2007: CIS 550, Database Management Systems.
• Fall 2007: Systems Lunch (with Milo Martin).

Previous courses:

• Spring 2007: CSE 455/CIS 555, Internet and Web Systems.
• Spring 2006: CSE 455/CIS 555, Internet and Web Systems.
• Spring 2006: Systems Lunch (with E Lewis, Milo Martin).
• Spring 2006: DB-IR-ML Reading Group (with Fernando Pereira, Lyle Ungar, Val Tannen).
• Fall 2005: Great Works in Systems seminar, with E Lewis, Milo Martin.
• Fall 2005: CIS 550, Database Management Systems.
• Spring 2005: CIS 650, Implementation of Data Management Systems.
• Spring 2005: CIS 700-5 Systems seminar, Sensor Networks (with E Lewis).
• Fall 2004: CIS 550, Database Management Systems.
• Fall 2004: CIS 700-4 Systems seminar, Machine Virtualization (with E Lewis, Honghui Lu, Milo Martin, Amir Roth, Steve Zdancewic).
• Spring 2004: CSE 455, Internet and Web Systems.
• Spring 2004: CIS 700-6 Systems seminar, Internet-Scale, Self-Organizing Distributed Computing (with E Lewis, Honghui Lu).
• Fall 2003: CIS 550, Introduction to Database Management Systems.
• Spring 2003: CIS 650, Advanced Topics in Databases, focusing on Data Sharing and the Web.
• Summer 1998 (U. Washington): CSE 142, Introduction to Programming.

Course Information

CSE 455/CIS 555 focuses on the fundamentals of serving and sharing information in an Internet and Web world. We will examine remote procedure calls and web services; application servers and middleware; XML as a mechanism for exhanging information; and keyword search and retrieval of documents. There will be a substantial group implementation project to reinforce the fundamentals and to provide experience with real-world technologies.

CIS 550 teaches the fundamentals of database design, querying, and data modeling (for relational, object-oriented, and XML data), and it will also cover the basic architecture and implementation of databases. The goals of the course are (1) to provide a working knowledge of database usage and (2) to provide a basic foundation for doing research in the database field. The course textbook is Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke, and there is a term project.

CIS 652 will investigate how database systems are designed and implemented in today's web-based world. The course will mostly be oriented around reading landmark and state-of-the-art research papers, and we will cover relational and XML query processing and indexing, transaction management, concurrency control, distribution, and many other issues.

CIS 700 is a new ongoing Systems Seminar (1/2 credit) that focuses on topics of general interest in the Penn Systems Group. The subject rotates each semester. Students interested in doing research in these topics are expected to enroll for an additional 1/2-credit Independent Study.