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Computer Science Tripos Syllabus - Databases
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Databases

Lecturer: Dr T.G. Griffin

No. of lectures: 12


Aims

The overall aim of the course is to cover the fundamentals of database management systems (DBMSs), paying particular attention to relational database systems. The course covers modelling techniques, transferring designs to actual database implementations, SQL, models of query languages, transactions as well as more recent developments, including data warehouses and On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP), and use of XML as a data exchange language. The lectures will make use of the open source DBMS, MySQL.


Lectures

  • Introduction: What is a database system?

  • Entity-Relationship modelling.

  • The relational data model.

  • Relational algebra.

  • Relational calculus.

  • SQL and Intetgrity Constraints

  • Schema refinement: functional dependencies.

  • Schema refinement: normalisation.

  • Further Relational Algebra, SQL

  • Transaction management overview.

  • On-line Analytical Processing (OLAP).

  • XML as a data exchange format.

Objectives


At the end of the course students should

  • be able to design entity-relationship diagrams to represent simple database application scenarios

  • know how to convert entity-relationship diagrams to relational database schemas in the standard Normal Forms

  • be able to program simple database applications in SQL

  • understand the basic theory of the relational model and both its strengths and the weaknesses

  • be familiar with various recent trends in the database area.

Recommended reading


Elmasri, R. & Navathe, S.B. (2000). Fundamentals of database systems. Addison-Wesley (3rd ed.).

Silberschatz, A., Korth, H.F. & Sudarshan, S. (2002). Database system concepts. McGraw Hill (4th ed.).

Ullman, J. & Widom, J. (1997). A first course in database systems. Prentice Hall.

Date, C.J. (2000). An introduction to database systems. Addison-Wesley (7th ed.).

Miszczyk, J. and others (1998). Mastering Data Warehousing Functions. (IBM Redbook DB2/400) Chapters 1 & 2 only. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg245184.html

Garcia-Molina, H. Data Warehousing and OLAP. Stanford University. http://www.cs.uh.edu/ ceick/6340/dw-olap.ppt

London Metropolitan University, Department of Computing. Data Warehousing and OLAP Technology for Data Mining. http://learning.unl.ac.uk/csp002n/CSP002N_wk2.ppt



next up previous contents
Next: Economics and Law Up: Easter Term 2005: Part Previous: Artificial Intelligence I   Contents
Christine Northeast
Wed Sep 8 11:57:14 BST 2004