CIS 550: Database & Information Systems (Fall 2011)
Location Towne 100, Tuesday/Thursday 4:30-6:00pm


Instructor




Teaching Assistants

Zachary Ives
Location: 576 Levine Hall North
Office hours: Wed 3:30-4:30 and by appointment


Allen Zhepeng Yan
Location: 512 Levine Hall
Office hours: Tuesday 9-10AM and by appointment

Divya Kali Ranga
Location: Levine 512
Office hours: Fridays 11-12 and by appointment

Nan Zheng
Location: Dolph Simons student lounge (by 5th floor elevator, Levine)
Office hours: Thursday 9-10AM and by appointment

Maulik Shah
Office hours and locations vary due to space availability:
Monday, September 19 Levine 315 5:30-6:30PM
Monday, September 26 Levine 512 6:00-7:00PM
Mondays Oct. 3-Dec. 5 Levine 315 5:00-6:00PM
and by appointment
Course description

Structured information is the lifeblood of commerce, government, and science today. This course provides an introduction to the broad field, covering a range of topics relating to structured data, ranging from data modeling to logical foundations and popular languages, to system implementations. We will study the theory of relational and XML data design, the basics of query languages, databases' role in the Web, information integration, database tuning and internals, and recent "cloud" data processing techniques.

The course project will exercise students' knowledge of database design, AJAX Web programming, and information integration, to build a social network photo sharing site.
Topics covered Database design, relational algebra and calculus, query languages (SQL, Datalog, XQuery), views, object and XML mappings, indexing, consistency, database tuning, servlet programming with AJAX, Map/Reduce and its relationship to SQL, basics of information retrieval and recommendation systems.
Format The format is two 1.5-hour lectures per week, plus assigned readings. There will be regular homework assignments, plus a team project, a midterm, and a final exam.
Prerequisites At least 12 months' programming experience, with at least 6 months' experience in the Java language (CIS 120, CIT 591, or equivalent). Familiarity with logic and logical reasoning.
Texts and readings
  • Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke, Database Management Systems, 3rd ed, McGraw-Hill
  • Supplemental readings from draft edition of Principles of Data Integration, AnHai Doan, Alon Halevy, and Zachary Ives, Morgan-Kaufmann
  • Assorted readings
Additional materials will be provided as handouts or in the form of light technical papers.
Grading

Homework and mini-projects 30%, Midterm 10%, Participation and intangibles 5%, Project 30%, Final 20%

All homework assignments should be done individually unless expressly allowed.
Other resources

Supplemental Textbooks (with links to Amazon)

(None of these are required, but some may be useful for further depth. You may be able to find some of them in the Engineering Library.)

Web Links

Potentially Useful Downloads

These are only necessary if you want to download software to run on your home machine. The CIS department servers and labs have Galax, Eclipse, Tomcat, and MySQL installed.
Schedule is available in (frequently updated) electronic form here
Assigments are available in (frequently updated) electronic form here

Image by Barry Mieny, Creative Commons license