COS 597A: Principles of Database and Information Systems

Student presentations

Each student will give a 20 minute presentation describing a recent research paper or direction of research within the general subject matter of database and information systems. The presentation will be in class on one of December 1, 3, 8 or 10. A range of topics is possible. For example, you may choose a conference or journal paper that presents a new technique for a core database problem. Another of the alternatives is to choose a special application area, such as databases for GPS data, and use a recent survey article to guide your presentation. 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 5:00 pm Thursday, Nov. 20, 2008 sign up for the day you will present - one of Dec 1, 3, 8 or 10. To sign up, use the Princeton University Web Appointment Scheduling System.   Search for the (only) calendar under my name or NetId (aslp), and click "Make Appointment".   Go to December, and the blocks for class presentations will be shown.   Click on the block you want. The "Appointments" column of the resulting page will show the number of slots available, who has already signed-up for the slot, and a "+" if any slots are available. Click on the "+" to add your name.

   2. By 11:55pm on Monday, Nov 24, 2008 send email to me (Professor LaPaugh) giving the citation for and a link to the paper (or papers) you wish to present.

   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.

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:

Very Large Data Base (VLDB) Conference, sponsored by Very Large Data Base Endowment Inc.
ACM SIGMOD Conference, sponsored by ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) Proceedings from ACM Digital Library
ACM Symposium on Principles of Database Systems (PODS), sponsored by ACM SIGMOD, Proceedings from ACM Digital Library
International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE), sponsored by IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering
The International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT), sponsored by The ICDT Council
International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT), sponsored by EDBT Association.
Several Conference Series sponsored by ACM Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR), Proceedings from ACM Digital Library

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 5 minutes after each presentation for questions from the class.

A.S. LaPaugh Mon Nov 17 12:02:51 EST 2008