Princeton University Computer Science Department

Computer Science 425 Database Systems Andrea LaPaugh What's New?

Spring 2001

5/25/01

• Graded final project reports and exams may be picked up from Professor LaPaugh.
• The median on the second exam is 90/100; the mean is 84/100.
• Solutions to Problems 3 and 4 of Exam 1 are on line. Please consult Professor LaPaugh for other solutions.

5/14/01 Professor LaPaugh will have office hours today from 4:30-5:30. Please email her if you need to see her and cannot come during this time.

5/11/01 Announcements about the project from Professor LaPaugh:

• Recall that I announced in class that you need not consider joining two relations that do not have a common attribute on which to join. Such joins degenerate to Cartesian products. It is not wrong for the query optimization algorithm to consider them, but it does add complexity to the implementation. Also, if one does a Cartesian product at one point, one must join on more than one attribute at another point (think about it), meaning that the dynamic program must allow for this as well.
• Your project report should document your algorithm implementation, including major issues such as how data for the algorithm is maintained and updated. I would like to be able to understand how you went about the implementation without reading code. Also, you should describe your strategy for evaluating your implemention for correctness and efficiency, and you should present your evaluation results.
• The project demonstration will be the opportunity for you to show your software executing. Expect to run your software on inputs that I give to you at that moment.
• You may now sign up for a demonstration time outside my office. All students authoring a project must be present at the time of its demonstration. Unless you need a platform other than a Windows NT machine on the CS Department network or a UNIX machine, the demonstration will take place in my office. If you do need a different platform, please send me email in advance.

5/11/01 Graded assignments 5 and 6 are available from Professor LaPaugh.

5/8/01 Professor LaPaugh will have office hours this week from 2pm to 3:30 pm on Friday (5/11). Please email her if you would like to meet with her at another time.

5/6/01 If you would like a sample problem for the project, download ascii files sample_relations, sample_indexes and sample_query. The buffer size also needs to be specified; we suggest you try buffer sizes 100, 200 and 400 pages (as separate instances). Remember, designing good test cases is part of t he project. This sample is just to give you a concrete example.

4/28/01 The solution for problem set 6 are now available online .

4/27/01 The solution for problem set 5 are now available online .

4/20/01 The solution for problem set 4 are now available online .

4/19/01

• The transparencies on SQL that I used 4/9/01 and 4/11/00 are now available online.
• The proof discussed in class concerning preserving 3NF when adding relations to fix decompositions that are not dependency preserving is now online.

4/18/01 The instructions for the use of mysqladmin to change your password into the studentdb were corrected yesterday.

4/10/01 The description of formats for the project is now available.

4/9/01 The project description is now available.

4/6/01 The solution for Problem set 3 is updated .

3/26/01 Instructions for obtaining and submitting Exam 1 are here . The exam is due Friday March 30 at 5pm.

3/16/01 The solution for problem set 3 are now available online .

3/11/01

• Because we are two days behind in lecture, Problem 5 of Problem Set 3 (on linear hashing) may be submitted as late as April 4, 2001 for full credit. I recommend you do it as soon as possible, since the material will be pretty stale by April 4. (Note that in class today I said we would tack the problem onto Problem Set 4, but I had forgotten how far in the future Problem set 4 is due.)
• Graded problem set 2 submissions are available from Prof. LaPaugh.
• The solution for problem set 2 are now available online .

3/5/01 9:10am There WILL BE CLASS today. Check this site again if it suddenly starts snowing and blowing like crazy.

2/28/01 The solution for problem set 1 are now available online .

2/14/01 The course text Database Managment Systems has a Web home page: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbbook. There you will find, among other things, solutions to the odd-numbered problems at the end of each chapter and text errata.