·
Lecture: MWF, 2:30-3:20pm; Hollister B14
·
Sections:
o
Monday, 7:30-8:20pm, Upson 315 (Section lead: Wenlei Xie)
o
Tuesday, 11:30-12:20pm; Upson 315 (Section lead: Tuan Cao)
o
Friday, 1:25-2:15pm; Upson 315 (Section lead: Ben Sowell)
·
Instructor: Johannes Gehrke
o Office hours: Mondays, 1:15-2:15pm, 4105B Upson Hall or
by appointment.
·
TAs: Tuan Cao, Qiming Fang, Keonseo Park, Ben Sowell, Wenlei Xie
o
Office hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 5-6pm in 328B Upson Hall.
o
Please do not send email to the TAs directly; you can contact the
TAs by sending email to “cs4320-fall2011-tas-l
at cornell.edu”.
·
Course Management System. The homework
assignments, grades, course schedule, and lecture notes are available in the
CMS.
·
Textbook: Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke. Database Management Systems, third
edition, 2002.
August 24, 2011:
·
(August 29) There are no sections this week. The sections will
start the week of September 5.
·
(August 24) All students from both CS4320 and CS5320 have been
added to the CS4320 course instance on CMS. Even though you might be enrolled
in CS5320, the "correct" CMS course instance for you is the CS4320
instance; both CS4320 and CS5320 are sharing the same lectures and assignments,
and thus instead of replicating the course contents into two separate instances
of the course on CMS, there will just be a single instance for all students. If
you are planning to take this course and you do not have access to the CS4320
CMS instance at this time, send email to the instructor as soon as possible.
·
(August 24) A few more spaces in each of the sections have opened
up. Note that the sections will only start the week of September 5.
Course Description
CS4320 gives an
introduction to relational database systems. Topics covered include the
relational model, SQL, transactions, database design, and concepts and
algorithms for building database management systems. Students are encouraged to
concurrently enroll in CS4321 (Practicum in Database Systems) as well. The
textbook is required, but the contents of the book do not constitute the
syllabus for the course - the classroom lectures define the course content, and
the textbook is a reference.
Prerequisites
CS4320 assumes knowledge
of the material covered in CS2110 (Object-Oriented Programming and Data
Structures) and CS3110 (Data Structures and Functional Programming).
Grading
The grades for CS4320
will be determined based on four homework assignments (50%), two exams (49%),
and participation in the course evaluation (1%).
·
Five Homework Assignments (50% of your
grade, 10% each). Details about the homework assignments can soon be found
in CMS.
·
Exams (49% of your grade)
o
Prelim: Thursday,
October 20, Upson B17; 7:30-9:30pm. (21% of your grade)
o
Final exam. Wednesday,
December 14, Room Olin Hall 155; 9am-11:30am. (28% of your grade)
·
Participate in the
course evaluation at the end of the course. (1% of your grade)
Sections
The
course has associated discussion sections lead by the TAs where the material
from class will be reviewed through exercises. In particular, the sections
focus on doing exercises from the book, hands-on exercises with a real database
system, and answering questions about the homework assignments. The sections start
the week of September 5.
Late Homework
Submissions Policy
All homework assignments
have to be submitted via CMS in electronic format. You may submit scanned PDF
files of your homework assignments, but there is a limit on upload size and it
is your responsibility to make sure in time that the upload of scanned files
succeeds. If there is a problem, submitting your homework via email or
on paper is not an option. We suggest composing the
homework assignments using a text editor or latex and creating a PDF file for
submission.
The assignments have
strict deadlines at 11:59pm on the day they are due. If you submit the
assignment up to 24 hours late, there will be a 15% penalty. If you submit your
assignment between 24 and 48 hours late, there will be a 30% penalty. No
homework submissions are accepted more than two days late. This may sound
strict, but we want to be fair and have the same rules for everyone. We will
try to provide the best help possible to make you succeed with the assignments,
but you will have to allocate sufficient time to finish your homework
assignments and submit them before the deadline.
Academic Integrity
Students at Cornell are
expected to follow a strict Code of Academic Integrity,
which is taken very seriously in the Department
of Computer Science and in CS432. If you are taking CS4320 or CS4321,
please print and sign the Academic
Integrity Form. You can hand your signed form to us in class.
Job Interviews
Many students who take
CS4320/1 also have job interviews in the fall. Please make sure not to schedule
any interviews such that you cannot attend the exams. We cannot move exams
because of interviews and we also cannot provide makeup exam. Makeup exams can
only be scheduled for serious medical reasons, not because of job
interviews. We know that some companies behave inflexibly regarding
interview dates (notably, Microsoft), but in this case you will have to state
firmly that it is a Cornell rule that exams have priority (which is true). It
is important not to tell recruiters that there is a possibility of moving the
exam, because it is not true and they will take your word on it. Please keep in
mind that traveling takes time: you should not schedule interviews a day before
or after an exam, particularly if the interview is on the West Coast. Job
interviews are no excuse for late submission of homework assignments.