Computer Science 420: Database Systems
Lehman College, City University of New York
Spring 2002

Announcements:

• This week:
  • On Tuesday, 26 February, class will meet in G 333.
  • Quiz 4 is due on Friday, 1 March.
  • Office hours are cancelled for Thursday. Please send email if you woul like to schedule an appointment to meet at another time.
  • On Thursday, 28 February, class will meet in the Linux laboratory, G 219.
• The prerequisite for this course is CMP 338 (Data Structures and Algorithms I). It is highly recommended that you have also completed CMP 337 (Discrete Mathematics and Applications to Computer Science). If you have not taken the prerequisite course, do not sign up for this course. All students who have not completed the prerequisites will be adminstratively dropped from the course during the first two weeks of classes.
  This course assumes you can write complete program in Java that does file manipulation, uses abstract data structures, and has GUI's. A major component of this course is writing a large database that is created and populated via programs and has a graphical user interface. If you would like to learn more about databases, but would prefer not to program, consider taking CIS 244 (Introduction to Database Management) instead.
• Some passwords on the Blackboard server have been reset to your original password after the service on Friday, 1 February. If you can log on to Blackboard but cannot see this class, send mail to Prof. St. John.
• Several students reported that Blackboard locked them out while taking Quiz 3. The assessment manager for the class has now been reset and you should be able to access Quiz 3. You may take the quiz as many times as you would like.
  If you have any problems with Blackboard, please send mail to Professor St. John immediately, so that the system adminstrators can be alerted to fix the problem.
• For those who have the first edition of the textbook: the discussion of ODL in Chapter 2 has been moved to its own chapter (Chapter 4) in the second edition.

Handouts:

• Syllabus
• Outline
• Overhead slides used in lecture on 29 January (slides from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001):
  • Academic Policies (pdf)
  • Introduction, E/R Diagrams: slides1.ps slides1.pdf
• Quiz 1 (due 7 February)
• Slides for lecture on 31 January and 5 February: (from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001).
  • E/R Diagrams: Subclasses, Keys, and Weak Entity Sets: slides2.ps slides2.pdf
  • Relational Model, Functional Dependencies: slides3.ps slides3.pdf
• Slides for lecture on 7 February (from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001):
  • Functional Dependencies, BNCF, 3NF: slides4.ps, slides4.pdf
• Quiz 2 (due 14 February)
• Lab 1 for 14 February
• Project Information
• Slides for lecture on 19 February (from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001):
  • Functional Dependencies, BNCF, 3NF: slides4.ps, slides4.pdf
  • Multivalued Dependencies: slides5.ps, slides5.pdf
• Lab 2 for 21 February
• Quiz 3 (due 21 February)
• Slides for lecture on 26 February (from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001):
  • SQL: slides6.ps, slides6.pdf
  • More on SQL: slides7.ps, slides7.pdf
• Lab 3 for 26 February
• Quiz 4 (due 28 February)
• Overhead slides used in lecture on 5 March (from the textbook's page-- Ullman's notes for Fall 2001):
  • More on SQL: slides7.ps, slides7.pdf
  • Yet more on SQL: slides8.ps, slides8.pdf
• Quiz 5 (due 7 March)
• Information about Exam 1.

Useful Links:

• Textbook's page (contains answers to starred exercises in the book)
• Object Data Management Group page contains the standard for ODL.
• PostgreSQL Webpage includes free SQL for linux, FAQ's and other documentation.