COS 597A:  Principles of Database and Information Systems

Student presentations


Each student will give a 17 minute presentation describing a recent (last 3 years) research paper or direction of research within the general subject matter of database and information systems.   Three additional minutes are reserved for questions from the class.  The presentation will be in class on one of December 5, 7, 12, 14 or during the extra class on January 9. 

Typically the presentation will summarize a conference or journal paper  published within the last 3 years on a topic related to the course material.  A range of topics is possible.  Some of you may choose a conference or journal paper that presents a new technique for a core database problem; others may wish to explore a topic related to database and information systems that we are not covering, such as privacy in information management.  You must provide a citation to one paper (or two if they are short conference papers) that is your primary source;  this paper will be posted for students who want more details about your presentation topic.  Prepare slides to use with your presentation;  you will submit these slides after the presentation.

Deadlines

Each individual must:

   1.  By 11:55pm on Monday, Nov 21, 2011 send email to me (Professor LaPaugh) giving the citation for and a link to the paper (or papers) you wish to present.  Papers are allocated on a first come first serve basis.  I will inform you immediately if your paper has already been chosen.

   2. Also by 11:55pm on Monday, Nov 21, 2011 sign up for the day you will present - one of Dec 5, 7, 12, 14 or Jan. 9.  To sign up, use the Princeton University Web Appointment Scheduling System.   Search for the calendar entitled "LaPaugh Course Calendar" under my name or NetId (aslp), and click "Make Appointment".   Go to December or January, and the blocks for class presentations during that month will be shown.   Click on the block you want.  The "Appointments" column of the resulting page will show the number of slots available.  Click on the "+" to add your name to an available slot. 
  
   3.  Prepare slides for your presentation.   I am available to go over slides and make suggestions before your presentation.

   4.  Within 24 hours after your presentation, submit the final version of your slides.


The presentation content

This is a short presentation.  You will not have time to give details of algorithms, systems or experimental design.  Your goal is to give the class an understanding of the problem examined, how the problem relates to the class material, and what the results are.  You should give an overview of how the results are obtained, but giving a good understanding of what was studied, why,  and what was concluded is most important.  There will be 3 minutes after each presentation for questions from the class.

Getting a presentation idea

You are welcome to do a presentation on a topic related to your course project.  In this case, choose a paper that captures what you are trying to implement or improve.  You are welcome to give a brief summary of any results from your course project at the time of your presentation, but your own course project work should not dominate the presentation.  However, it is fine to present a published research paper of which you are author or a co-author.

If you do not want to do a presentation related to your project, your choice is quite open.   I am happy to discuss topic ideas.   Places to look for inspiration are the same list of conferences that I provided for project ideas;  recall that the papers presented at these conferences are not limited to papers on classic databases and their issues:

Some sample papers

Here are a few papers from SIGMOD'11 (June12-16, 2011)  that I think are interesting. There are certainly many more interesting papers in SIGMOD'11 and in recent meetings of the other conference series above.





A.S. LaPaugh Mon Nov 14 17:34:07 EST 2011