Course Information

COP 5725 Advanced Databases
Date: Jan 6-Apr 23, 2021
Time: M/W
Venue: Classes via Youtube

Instructor Information

Instructor: Jiawei Zhang
Email: jzhang [AT] cs.fsu.edu
Office: Link to Join
Office Hours: 11:30-12:30PM (Monday)

TA: Haopeng Zhang
Email: hz19e@my.fsu.edu
Office Hours: 2:00-3:00PM (Wednesday)
Online Office: Link to Join
Meeting ID: 733 062 3325
Password: 123

Course Description

Do you know how many Turing Awards were given to the database field? For what contributions? The dominating relational database system, which we take for granted now, was deemed impossible to implement and difficult to use in its early days. What breakthroughs turned the rather mathematical idea into reality? What are the classic milestones that pioneered and shaped the landscape of the data management field? Do you know that, although relational database systems are almost commodity software now, researchers are even more fascinated by general data management issues? The new challenges naturally arise in the junction of databases vs. information retrieval, structured vs. unstructured data, querying vs. searching, the Web, and many more novel contexts. What are the current topics and future agenda? To build the essential foundation as a stepping-stone to data management research, this course exposes students to advanced database system design principles and concepts. We will broadly explore the classic as well as more recent research work.

Topics Covered

• database fundamentals
• data storage and representation
• advanced indexing
• query processing
• query optimization
• data mining
• misc.

Textbook

Required textbook.

• Database Systems: The Complete Book 2nd edition, by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman and Jennifer Widom. ISBN: 978-0131873254, Prentice Hall, 2008.

Recommended textbook.

• Database Management Systems 3rd edition, by Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke. ISBN: 978-0072465631, McGraw-Hill, 2002.
• Database System Concepts 6th edition, by Avi Silberschatz, Henry Korth and S. Sudarshan. ISBN: 978-0073523321, McGraw-Hill, 2010.
• Fundamentals of Database Systems 7th edition, by Ramez Elmasri, and Shamkant Navathe. ISBN: 978-0133970777, Pearson, 2016.

Prerequisites

COP4710: Database Systems and COP4530: Data Structures and Algorithms or equivalents courses are required. Furthermore, students should come with good programming skills. If you are not sure whether you have the right background, please contact the instructor.

Course Format

The course is lecture-based with one examination (final), several paper review and some in-class presentations. There are two individual assignments and a group-level programming project. In order to encourage attending classes and participating in discussions, there will be several occasionally quizzes for students.

• Lectures and reading: we encourage (and appreciate!) students to attend classes, because effective lectures rely on students' participation to raise questions and contribute in discussions. We will provide lecture notes and related papers before class, which will be posted on the schedule page. Read the textbook and papers for the required reading before lectures, and study them more carefully after class. Please note that all the required readings are fair materials for exams. These materials may not be fully covered in lectures. Our lectures are intended to motivate as well as provide a road map for your reading-- with the limited lecture time we may not be able to cover everything in the readings.
• Questions: We encourage students discussing their questions and problems first with peers and classmates. This way, you can get immediate help and also learn to communicated "professionally" with your classmates. In any case for more thorough discussion, come to the office hours of TA's and the instructor's. Any announcement will be posted on the announcement page. Make sure to check it frequently enough to stay informed.
• Assignment: There will be two written assignments spaced out over the course of the semester. All the assignments should be done individually by the students. Assignments should be submitted before the due dates.
• Exam: There will be a final exam held at the end of the semester.
• Paper summaries: There will be a series of papers for careful studying, which represent our selection from both classic and state-of-the-art literature in database and data management areas. Each student will submit a one-or-two page summary for each paper in the due date during the class.
• Paper presentation: To enrich our channels of learning, we ask our students to choose one paper related to her/his project and present it in the class. The paper should be chosen from the designated conferences/journals and published no earlier than 2008. Each student will sign up and present in the second half of the semester. Each group/student will spend 20 minutes for presentation and Q&A, and will lead and moderate discussions in the class.
• Project: There will be a semester-long project, which involves significant database application programming. The project will be structured with several milestones due in the course of the semester, leading to a demo and write-up near the end of the semester.