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DATA 520 Databases (a practical and no-nonsense course) School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of North Dakota Fall 2023
Synchronous Class Delivery
The class lectures will be delivered synchronously via https://und.zoom.us/j/2489867333, and the Zoom video will be posted on the Blackboard afterwards. Lecture Notes No textbook will be used. Instead award-winning, interactive, informative, and practical lecture notes (based on books, papers, online documents, and user manuals) and detailed and precise class instructions will be provided. Collectively, the lecture notes and instructions are more like a small book, which supplies much more information than regular notes do. Students will not have problem learning the subjects or taking the exams after studying them and doing programming exercises. Description This course gives a study of database system architecture, design methodology, and implementation, with emphasis on the relational model. It includes four themes:
After taking this course, students are able to achieve the following goals, but not limited to:
Database technologies like programming languages have no breakthroughs for years, so old, new, these, or those textbooks are pretty much the same. In other words, not much database research is left to do. However, databases are still a useful tool for other research areas like data science including data (web) mining and discovery, information retrieval, and mobile data management. Don’t mention databases are a must tool for many applications such as e/m-commerce sites and IT systems. Most course materials are from the following two sources:
Three programming exercises (40% total): 1. Single-user database —— 12% 2. Multiple-user database —— 12% 3. Mobile-enabled database —— 16% Two exams —— 20% each Final exam —— 20% Tentative Schedule Week 1 —— Introduction Weeks 2, 3, 4 —— Programming Exercise I construction Week 5 —— HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Weeks 6, 7 —— Web-JDBC programming Week 8 —— Relational model and algebra Week 9 —— SQL (Structured Query Language) I Week 10 —— Database design I — E-R modeling Weeks 11, 12, 13, 14 —— Android programming Week 15 —— SQL (Structured Query Language) II Week 16 —— Database design II — Normalization Remark I Definitions, terminologies, and theories will be discussed minimally in this course. Instead practical works and programming knowledge will be emphasized and enforced. The old technology, CGI (Common Gateway Interface), will be used to connect the Web to JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) programs because of the limited resources provided by the CEM, but CGI has no problem implementing the features used by other technologies (like ASP.NET or PHP). Also, the focus of this course is on databases, instead of Web-database connection. Remark II Online asynchronous is also provided for the distance students. It is conducted fully through Internet instruction. For details, check UND Online & Distance Education or DEDP (Distance Engineering Degree Program). Besides, https://und.zoom.us/j/2489867333 or YuJa is used for hosting and sharing lecture videos, and ProctorU may be used to monitor the exams. Remark III Web, mobile, and database programming is a must for IT developers, and the only effective way to learn software development is practicing, instead of studying concepts or writing some testing programs. No pain, no gain 😂 According to a study, students in computer courses learn much more by building large-scale exercises instead of many small-scale test programs, which give fragmented knowledge contrary to solid understanding of the system. Remark V Remote work is a trend for IT workers. This course also allows you to learn how to do it by using the VPN (virtual private networks) to connect to our Linux server undcemcs02.und.edu, and having the exercises set up at the server and be accessed from the clients.
Instructor’s Qualification The instructor’s PhD dissertation is titled “An image database system based on a linear skeleton representation,” which includes a database-driven web system by using Perl and Sybase in 1997, when not many people were familiar with the Web. In fact, all his research to date uses or relates to databases, but not tries to build or enhance a DBMS (database management system). In addition, he is familiar with many kinds of databases like Oracle, MySQL, Google Firebase, SQLite, Microsoft Access, Sybase, and MongoDB. Dishonesty Disability |
