Computer Laboratory

Course pages 2016–17

Databases

Last change: Wed Mar 15 11:01:09 GMT 2017

Revision guide

  • Since the syllabus has changed this year, many of the Past exam questions are no longer relevant.
  • Topics that are no longer covered include functional dependencies and normal forms. For example, there is no need to revise for questions such as y2016p4q5.
  • However, many other questions are still relevant. In particular those related to ER data modelling, implementing ER models in a relational database, and the balance between read-optimised representations of data and update-optimised representations of data. So one could imagine questions similar to y2016p4q6 or y2014p4q5.
  • Of course there may be questions related to topics that are new to the syllabus, such as graph-oriented databases and document-oriented database. Although there are no past questions I have exposed the solutions to suggested supervisions and practical work to aid in your revision.

Lecture notes

Contest submissions (finding interesting things in Movie DB)

Suggested supervisions

Drop-in help sessions in the Intel Lab

NOTE: this was updated on 8 October and Monday sessions were dropped

The drop-in sessions are available to help you with your practical work. You are not required to attend these sessions. But you will find them useful, especially if you are having trouble getting the database systems (see below) installed or running.

  • Exercise 1 ("Tick 1")
    • Set 13 Oct
    • Help session, Wed 19 Oct, 2-4pm
    • Due 21 Oct
  • Exercise 2 ("Tick 2")
    • Set 20 Oct
    • Help session, Wed 26 Oct, 2-4pm
    • Due 28 Oct
  • Exercise 3 ("Tick 3")
    • Set 27 Oct
    • Help session, Wed 2 Nov, 2-4pm
    • Due 4 Nov

Due to University regulations, we cannot automatically register all submitted work as completed. We will select subgroups of students to verify their work to a "ticker" during a five minute slots scheduled on these days:

  • Tick 1 session, Wed 26 Oct, 2-4pm
  • Tick 2 session, Wed 2 Nov, 2-4pm
  • Tick 3 session, Wed 9 Nov, 2-4pm

Practical work