Tips for the CS462 Final Exam, Spring 2003
General Guidelines
 Pledge your test
 Be precise and concise
 Always print
 Several questions from exercises
 Total 5 questions
o Total 120 points
o 60 points for definitions and concepts (Question 1 with 12 parts)
Chapter 7. Relational database design
 Functional dependencies
o Definitions of FD, F+, and canonical cover
 Decomposition
o Lossless-join decomposition
o No redundancy
o Dependency preservation
 3NF & BCNF
o How to decompose a relation schema into 3NF
o Pros and cons of 3NF compared to BCNF
Chapter 11. Storage and file structure
 Buffer replacement policies
o Pros and cons of several approaches, especially LRU (sequential flooding)
Chapter 12. Indexing and hashing
 Ordered indexing, B+ tree indexing, and (extendible) hashing
o Definitions
o Skills: students should be able to deal with insertions/deletions
o Comparative pros and cons of different approaches given specific queries
Chapters 13 and 14. Query processing & optimization
 Basic query processing steps
 Query processing, especially in terms of selection, (external) sorting and join, and
their processing cost
 Equivalence rules for query optimization
Chapter 15. Transactions
 Definition of ACID properties and DBMS support
 Definition of serializability, conflict serializability, and view serializability
o Examples
o Relationships between conflict serializability and view serializability
o Test for serializability
 Recoverable vs. cascadeless schedules
Chapter 16. Concurrency control
 2PL and its variations
o Benefits of strict 2PL: cascadeless, why?
 Timestamp ordering
 Optimistic concurrency control
 Phantom phenomenon
Chapter 17. Database recovery
 Atomicity and durability support
o Why hard?
 Write Ahead Log (WAL)
o Why necessary?
 Checkpointing
o Definition
o Cost/benefit
 Recovery procedure
o Given WAL and checkpointing, how does a DBMS recover from a
system crash?
Miscellaneous
 Important concepts covered in the midterm exam
List of in-class exercise and homework questions
 7.2 and a variation (Is R in 3NF?), 7.11, 7.12, 7.13, 7.18, 7.25, 7.26
 11.3, 11.6, 11.14
 12.1, 12.2, 12.4, 12.5.b, 12.7.a-e (Start with the tree you have got from 12.5.b)
 13.1, 13.2, 13.5.a-c
 14.1 – 14.4
 15.2, 15.3, 15.4, 15.8, 15.10
 16.2 – 16.4, 16.24, 16.27
 17.4, 17.5