Databases
Assessed Exercises
Submission deadlines:
- Exersise One: 19th November 204 - Noon
- Exerise Two: 3rd December 2024 - Noon
There will be two Assessed Exercises set this year for this course. Their timing is announced above and in the lecture notes and, definitively, in the Head Of Department's notice. The starter packs for the first tick are now ready, so work can start, but submission is not yet open.
The first Exercise uses a relational database (SQLITE3 is recommended) and the second uses TinyDB. For the first Exercise, you are expected to have learned the basic SQL from the tutorial linked below. It contains examinable material. For the second Exercise you will need a small amount of experience with Python.
There are two optional Help-and-Tick sessions. Times and dates will be added HERE.
To make it clear that everybody must submit only their own work, tasks for each candidate are slightly different from each other. Therefore, use your own worksheet or starter pack. A generic pack is also available for supervisors to look at. Submission is via Moodle. Much of the assessment of is automated, but there is a human element too. You may generally expect for work to be marked within two working days of submission.
For your worksheet please go to the following web page and then add your own crsid to the end of the URL: Exercise Worksheets. See also clarifications1.txt.
Primary Materials
- Lecture Notes PDF. (as printed).
- James Sharkey has written three tutorials for you to follow and learn in your own time (especially the first one):
-- As well as everything in the lecture notes (unless specifically marked non-examinable), you are expected to understand all the key words in the glossaries below and to thorougly know the contents of the Relational Tutorial for Tripos examination purposes in Summer 2025.
-- You will need knowledge from the Relational and Document Tutorials to complete the two Assessed Exercises.
-- Understanding the principle differences between the three forms is part of the course syllabus and so Tripos questions will lightly touch on the contents of the Document and Graph Tutorials. - Here are the IMDB snapshots you should be working with for 24/25 cst-ia-databases-2023-resources-v1.zip. These are the same as last year.
- Learners' Guide and FAQ: Learners Guide
Glossaries
Two glossaries of keywords will be placed here. You are expected to understand all the key words in these glossaries, whether they explicitly appear in the lecture slides or not.
Glossary 2 - to be added.
Supervision Materials
- Supervision 1: Kick-off Supervision Materials and the Main Supervision Sheet 1.
- Supervision 2: Main Supervision Sheet 2.
- Supervision 3: Main Supervision Sheet 3.
Secondary Materials
For those with further interest:
- Interesting 'The Register' article: September 2023: MongoDB's SQL-to-NoSQL converter uses AI to smash the language barrier
- A book on graph algorithms using Neo4j: Graph Algorithms (full text, PDF) note: most of the content relates to the Ia Algorithms course, rather than this course.
- Perhaps look on previous years' pages for further suggestions ...
Last year’s course materials are still available.