Syllabus

1. Syllabus CS 765: Introduction to Database Management Systems Fall 2008 william.perrizo@ndsu.edu Text Database Management Systems Ramakrishnan/Gehrke, 3rd Edition. Office Hours: T-Th 2-3:15, in IACC A15 (others by appointment. Please email requests. The first office hour, August 26, 2008, will meeting in IACC 102 at which time the course and syllabus will be discussed and any questions anwered.) Please use email for questions that can be emailed. If you have a question that cannot be adequately stated or answered by email, please use the office hours. Because of a health situation, I need to request that you please do not come to my office hours if you have a bad cold or flu or another serious infection (until it is non-infectuous). Thank you for your cooperation on this matter. I really appreciate it. All assignments and your term paper must be SUBMITED THROUGH BLACKBOARD. All records will be kept on the Blackboard system and will be available to you from there. Section notes and Section assignment descriptions are available on the BLACKBOARD system.

2. COURSE DESCRIPTION Topics: Introduction to Database Management Systems, Data Sets, Retrieval, Relational Data Structures, Transaction Processing, Recovery, Distributed DBMS, Querying, Data Mining, Normalization, Security. COURSE OBJECTIVES: understand the fundamentals of database systems. gain experience in database research and in the written reporting of it. TERM PAPER (150 points): Each student will pick a topic (some example topics and topic areas in the Possible Topics file on blackboard) - but it must be a new RESEARCH idea of yours, NOT A PAPER written by someone else. Included in the Possible Topics file on blackboard is a complete set of guidelines on what to include in your paper and what format to use. Research the topic, write a quality paper. Topics will to be approved 1st-Come-1st-Serve (email the title and a short abstract to william.perrizo@ndsu.edu by November 15, 2008.) Papers will be judged on contribution, level of current research interest, depth, correctness, clarity, and insight.

3. COURSE Assignments: (See Blackboard for descriptions) Take Home FinaldueDecember11 5PM(30 points) Assignment 1 is dueSeptember 13 5PM (Age of infinite storage)(10 points) Assignment 2 is dueSeptember 20 5PM (Horizontal data) (10 points) Assignment 3 is dueSeptember 27 5PM (Vertical data) (10 points) Assignment 4 is dueOctober4 5PM (Relational) (10 points) Assignment 5 is dueOctober11 5PM (Disks, pages, buffers) (10 points) Assignment 6 is dueOctober18 5PM (Files) (10 points) Assignment 7 is dueOctober25 5PM (Indexes) (10 points) Assignment 8 is dueNovember1 5PM (Transactions) (10 points) Assignment 9 is dueNovember8 5PM (Query Processing) (10 points) Assignment 10 is dueNovember15 5PM (Data Mining) (10 points) Assignment 11 is dueNovember29 5PM (Normalization) (10 points) Assignment 12 is dueDecember6 5PM (Recovery) (10 points) The Term Paperis dueDecember11 5PM (150 points) Grades will be based on a grade curve of your total points out of 300 points On all assignments, you must work alone. Please do not share your work with anyone or be shared with by anyone else. Submit assignments and paper through BLACKBOARD.

4. COURSE DESCRIPTION continued REQUIRED MATERIALS: The text, email, blackboard, WWW access are required. STUDENTS NEEDING SPECIAL ACCOMMODATIONS or who have special needs are invited to share that information with the instructor. PREREQUISITES: CS366 or equivalent. Student must be able to read and follow technical, detailed instructions and adapt solutions. ACADEMIC HONESTY: Work must be completed in a manner consistent with NDSU Senate Policy 335: Code of Academic Responsibility and Conduct. The goals of this course include to initiate graduate student's into data and database systems research and to enhance graduate student's written presentation skills of their research. Additional reference material on all topics in this course can be found on the web by doing a Google (or Yahoo or Ask) search on the appropriate keyword(s) and also by using the NDSU library. Good luck in your 765 course!

5. Syllabus Appendix: What is GRADUATE SCHOOL? GRADUATE SCHOOL, COLLEGE, TECHNICAL/PROF. SCHOOL RELATIONSHIP in a UNIVERSITY Universities, by definition, integrate research, teaching and service. The Graduate school at a University has the primary responsibility for research. A College has the primary responsibility for teaching. A Vocational, Technical and Professional School has primary responsibility for training in the use of specific existing tools of a trade, area or profession. This is a Graduate School course and will focus on research. Even though 765 may be in your first graduate course, you have already been doing research for a long time, so it won't be entirely new to you. What is RESEARCH? Research is just another word for active learning. There is really very little difference between active learning and research, sometimes with the slight difference that, early on, most concepts that you research have been pre-researched by others, while, later on, most concepts that you research have not been pre-research by others. In both cases, the student masters context, background and language of the area, and developes new or improved solutions to questions and problems. A good researcher takes the point of view: There's almost always a better way to do anything. A good researcher questions the prevailing methods and challenge the current practices in an attempt to find a better way. I like to call it finding a new, killer idea and then taking the responsibility to prove that it is killer.