McGill University
Department of Computer Science
Course Outline of COMP-421
Database Systems
Winter 2008
Course Instructor: Khaled Jababo
Prerequisites: COMP-206, COMP-251 and COMP-302: Knowledge of data structures,
algorithms, programming languages and basics of program development. Knowledge in
operating systems is of advantage.
Course Objectives
Database systems have become an integral part of daily life information management.
The big vendors like Oracle, IBM DB2 or Microsoft SQL Server are well known players
on the IT market; Linux distributions (for instance Red Hat), include an open source
database management system in their distribution package; even the Microsoft Office
suite contains kind of a database management system. As a result, knowing at least the
basic concepts behind these systems and how to use them is becoming an essential skill
for IT specialists.
This course is intended to give students a solid background in relational database
management systems (DBMS). If you are interested in becoming an effective user of a
DBMS, or a DBMS professional, this is a good introduction to the topic. The course has
two main parts: the first part explains how to use a DBMS, the second part looks at how
the DBMS works internally.
The first part will discuss the design of databases and how to work with the database. Or
in other words: how can you squeeze your "real world" data (the employee information of
a company, the product information of a bookstore, the student and activity information
of a students' association) into the relational data model of the database system and how
can you retrieve the data afterwards. In more detail, the first part will cover the
conceptual design of databases using the entity-relationship model and the relational
data model. Then it will discuss how data can be accessed using Relational Algebra
and SQL (the standard query language for relational database systems).
The second part of the course is system-oriented and discusses the internals of a DBMS.
Using a DBMS is one issue, using it efficiently and correctly is a different story. DBMS
are designed to work for very different application areas and present a general purpose
software. In order to be able to tune a DBMS to your specific requirements you must
know how your database application is executed by the DBMS. This second part will
cover two main areas: transaction management and query execution. When you
connect to the DBMS and access the data, you do this in the context of a transaction. A
transaction is considered one logical unit of work. A classical example is a money
transfer from account A to account B. The DBMS provides some important
transactional guarantees. For instance, a transaction is either executed completely or
not at all (you don't want that the amount is withdrawn from account A but does not
appear as a plus on account B). Understanding the concepts of transactions, and how
DBMS implement them is crucial for keeping the data clean and consistent. The last topic
will be about how the DBMS retrieves the data you are asking for. We will talk about
how data is stored internally, what mechanisms exist to access this data and how the
DBMS determines which algorithm to use to answer to user queries as fast as possible.
If we have time we will talk about an advanced topic, e.g. XML database systems.
Lecture Topics
List of Topics
1:
Introduction
2:
Entity-Relationship Model
3:
Relational Model and Data Definition Language
4:
Relational Algebra
5:
Functional Dependencies
6:
SQL
7:
Transactions
8:
Concurrency Control
9:
Essentials of File and Disk Management
10:
Recovery System
11:
Indexing
12:
Query Processing
13:
Query Optimization
14:
XML (time permits)
Textbook
Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke: Database Management Systems; McGraw
Hill, 3rd Edition, 2003.
References


Abraham Silberschatz, Henry F. Korth and S. Sudarshan: Database System
Concepts; McGraw Hill, 5th Edition, 2006.
Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman and Jennifer Widom: Database
Systems: the complete book; Prentice Hall, 2002.
The Web Page
http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~jababo/
Material presented in class will be linked to the page, as well as other material of interest.
Other sites will be linked in as the course proceeds.
Marking Scheme
There are four written assignments (all probably having the same weight), four project
deliveries (each with the same weight), one midterm and one final. The scheme will
likely be




20% assignments
20% project deliveries
10% midterm
50% final
A note on academic integrity
McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the
meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under
the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures (see
http://www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information).
Please read carefully the student guide to avoid plagiarism.
Assignments and Project
Homeworks consist of written assignments and a programming project.
In the written assignments the students have to solve concrete problems. A late turn-in
will result in a penalty of 10% per day (e.g. if an assignment has in total 100 points, a
student achieves 80 points but turns in the assignment a day too late, then he/she will
receive 80-10=70 points. Every student has to do the written assignments by
herself/himself.
The programming project of this course is to develop and build a database application for
a real-world domain. The students will design a schema, create a database using DB-II,
maintain, query and update the data, develop application programs, and implement a
user-friendly interface. The project will be done step by step with four project
assignments. The students will work in teams of three on the programming project. All
team members are supposed to work together and participate equally in the project
development.