CS632: Advanced Database Systems

Spring 2003

TR 2:55-4:10 Thurston 203

Course Outline

Useful textbooks:

[1] Ramakrishnan and Gehrke, Database Management Systems. The book has a homepage with some helpful stuff.

[2] Garcia-Molina, Ullman and Widom, Database Systems (the Complete Book), Chapters 2-3. This book also has a homepage.

[3] Atzeni and De Antonellis, Relational Database Theory. This book is on reserve in the Engineering Library.

There will also be lecture notes appearing from time to time.

Lecture 1: 23 Jan:

History - the original Codd paper introducing Relational Databases.

[4] E.F. Codd, A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks, CACM 13(6), 1970.

Lectures 2-4: 28, 30 Jan; 4 Feb:

The relational model; relational algebra and calculus; expressiveness.

Material is taken mostly from [4], Chapters 1 and 2.

[5] Lecture Notes on this material will appear regularly. The first section (basics and Relational Algebra) is here. The next section (Domain and Tuple Relational Calculus) is here.

Supplemental references:

[6] Aho, A.V. and J.D. Ullman, Universality of Data Retrieval Languages, Sixth ACM POPL, 1979.
The appendix contains the original proof that Relational Algebra (hence Relational Calculus) cannot express transitive closure.

[7] Chandra, A.K. and D. Harel, Computable Queries for Relational Databases, JCSS 21 (1980).
A (rather dense) discussion of completeness of query languages, presenting a language (QL) that is shown to be complete.

[2] Chapter 10 discusses logical query languages which can express recursion.

Lectures 4-5: 4, 6 Feb:

[8] The final notes section on DRC/TRC expressiveness and decidability material is here.