Fundamentals of Modern Database Systems

Lectures:
? h

Recommended for

This is a fundamental course to be attended by students without basic database knowledge. With this course the student will understand how to effectively use commercial database systems.

The course was last given

Yearly

Prerequisites

Elementary programming knowledge, and knowledge about data structures and algorithms, corresponding to the course TDDB57 Data Structures and Algorithms.

Related Courses

There is related ECSEL Perspective Course on Advances in Database Technology which brings the student up-to-date on the state-of-the-art in database research and advanced systems.

The Research Frontier Course Multidatabase Systems covers recent developments within the areas of managing collections of heterogeneous databases as well as principles of distributed and scalable storage structures.

Contents

This course covers the fundamentals of the database field, i.e. is how to use computers to store and manage large quantities of data.

The first part of the course covers how to design a database, i.e. how to model reality using the so called Entity-Relationship (ER) model and how to translate ER models into efficient representations of data in computers using a Database Management System (DBMS). In particular we study how to design and use relational databases where data is stored as tables and are retrieved and updated using the database language SQL.

The course covers how a DBMS is structured and what major facilities it provides. E.g. in order to handle concurrent access to shared databases a transaction mechanism is povided, to describe the data there is a meta-data (schema) facility, to query data there is a general query facility, to reliably store data there is a recovery subsystem, and to secure data there are authorization facilities and integrity constraints, etc.

The course also gives overviews of some important recent developments within the fast-growing field of commercial database systems, e.g. Object-Oriented Databases, Active Databases, Distributed Databases, and modern PC-based database tools such as Access and Java-Builder.

Literature

• Elmasri, Navathe: Fundamentals of Database Systems, 2nd Ed, Benjamin/Cummings, 1995.
• Course Compendium for independent Computer Exercises.

Organization

This course is organized as a series of lectures, with accompanying computer based self-study exercises.

Examination

A large part of the course consists of a number of excercises that you will do mostly on your own.

Teacher

Tomas Padron-McCarthy

Examiner:

Nahid Shahmehri

Schedule

Spring 2000, second quarter.

Credit

3 credits

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