• Lecturer
• Services
• Course Goals
• Pre-requisites
• Learning/Teaching
• Rough Schedule
• Textbooks
• Prac Work
• Assignments
• Quizzes
• Exam
• Assessment Summary
• Forum Etiquette
• General Etiquette
• Course Outline

❖ Lecturer

Name:		John Shepherd
Office:		K17-410 (turn right from lift)
Email:		cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au
Online:		Tuesday 2-4, Thursday 2-4
Research:		Information Extraction/Integration Information Retrieval/Web Search e-Learning Technologies Multimedia Databases Query Processing

❖ Services

Email cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au

• Technical issues   (e.g. problems compiling PostgreSQL)
• Detailed assignment questions   (shared-screen debugging)

Special consideration:

• https://student.unsw.edu.au/special-consideration

Educational Adjustments:

• https://student.unsw.edu.au/els

❖ Course Goals

Introduce you to:

• architecture of relational DBMSs  (e.g. PostgreSQL)
• algorithms/data-structures for data-intensive computing
• representation of relational database objects
• representation of relational operators (sel,proj,join)
• techniques for processing SQL queries
• techniques for managing concurrent transactions
• concepts in distributed and non-relational databases

Develop skills in:

• analysing the performance of data-intensive algorithms
• the use of C to implement data-intensive algorithms

❖ Pre-requisites

We assume that you are already familiar with

• the C language and programming in C
    (e.g. completed ≥ 1 programming course in C)
• developing applications on RDBMSs
    (SQL, [relational algebra]   e.g. an intro DB course)
• basic ideas about file organisation and file manipulation
    (Unix open, close, lseek, read, write, flock)
• sorting algorithms, data structures for searching
    (sorting, trees, hashing   e.g. a data structures course)

If you don't know this material very well, don't take this course

PostgreSQL, Assignments and Exam all involve C programming.

❖ Learning/Teaching

What's available for you:

• Textbooks: describe some syllabus topics in detail
• Course Notes: describe syllabus topics in some detail
• Content videos: short videos covering one topic (4-5 / week)
• Slides: from Content Videos
• Readings: research papers on selected topics
• Online: live Q&A and problem-solving sessions (like a tute)

The onus is on you to make use of this material.

Online sessions are on Bb Collaborate (via Moodle), Tue 2-4, Thu 2-4

❖ Learning/Teaching (cont)

Things that you need to do:

• Exercises: tutorial-like questions
• Prac work: lab-class-like exercises
• Assignments: large/important practical exercises
• On-line quizzes: for self-assessment

Dependencies:

• Exercises → Exam (theory part)
• Prac work → Assignments → Exam (prac part)

There are no tute/lab classes; use Forum, Email, Consults

• debugging is best done in person  (can see full context)

❖ Rough Schedule

Week 01		relational algebra, catalogs
Week 02		storage: disks, buffers, pages, tuples
Week 03		RA ops: scan, sort, projection
Week 04		selection: heaps, hashing, indexes
Week 05		selection: N-d matching, similarity
Week 06		no new content, no online sessions
Week 07		joins: naive, sort-merge, hash join
Week 08		query processing, optimisation
Week 09		transactions: concurrency, recovery
Week 10		database trends (guest lecture)

❖ Textbooks

No official text book; several are suitable ...

• Silberschatz, Korth, Sudarshan
  "Database System Concepts"
• Elmasri, Navathe
  "Database Systems: Models, languages, design ..."
• Kifer, Bernstein, Lewis
  "Database Systems: An algorithmic-oriented approach"
• Garcia-Molina, Ullman, Widom
  "Database Systems: The Complete Book"

but not all cover all topics in detail

❖ Prac Work

In this course, we use PostgreSQL v12   (compulsory)

Prac Work requires you to compile PostgreSQL from source code

• instructions explain how to do this on Linux at CSE
• also works easily on Linux and MacOS at home
• PostgreSQL docs describe how to compile for Windows

Make sure you do the first Prac Exercise when it becomes available.

Sort out any problems ASAP (preferably at a consultation).

❖ Prac Work (cont)

PostgreSQL is a large software system:

• > 2000 source code files in the core engine/clients
• > 1,500,000 lines of C code in the core

You won't be required to understand all of it :-)

You will need to learn to navigate this code effectively.

Will discuss relevant parts in lectures to help with this.

PostgreSQL books?

• tend to add little to the manual, and cost a lot

❖ Assignments

Schedule of assignment work:

Ass		Description		Due		Marks
1		Storage Management		Week 5		15%
2		Query Processing		Week 9		20%

Assignments will be done individually

Assignments will require up-front code-reading (see Pracs).

Test cases available before submsission   (extra tests after submission)

Ultimately, submission is via CSE's give system.

Late penalties apply; plagiarism checking will be used

❖ Quizzes

Over the course of the semester ...

• five online quizzes
• taken in your own time (but there are deadlines)
• each quiz is worth a small number of marks

Quizzes are primarily a review tool to check progress.

But they contribute 15% of your overall mark for the course.

❖ Exam

Three-hour** exam in the May exam period.

Exam is NOT held in CSE Labs; you do it at home (via ssh or vlab)

The exam is totally open-book ("open-web").

Things that we can't reasonably test in the exam:

• writing large programs, running major experiments

Everything else is potentially examinable.

Contains: descriptive questions, analysis, small programming exercises.

Exam contributes 50% of the overall mark for this course.

** 3-hours worth of work; 4-hours allowed to complete

❖ Exam (cont)

If you cannot attend the final exam ...

• because of documented illness/misadventure

then you will be offered a Supplementary Exam.

You get one chance at passing the exam

• unsw's new fit-to-sit rule applies

Exam hurdle = 20/50 (which is only 40%)

❖ Assessment Summary

Your final mark/grade is computed according to the following:

ass1   = mark for assignment 1      (out of 15)
ass2   = mark for assignment 2      (out of 20)
quiz   = mark for on-line quizzes   (out of 15)
exam   = mark for final exam        (out of 50)
okExam = exam > 20/50           (after scaling)

mark   = ass1 + ass2 + quiz + exam
grade  = HD|DN|CR|PS,  if mark ≥ 50 && okExam
       = FL,           if mark < 50 && okExam
       = UF,           if !okExam

❖ Forum Etiquette

Webcms3 has a contextual forum

• posts form part of a comment thread on resource pages

Before posting: check that your query is not already answered

• main forum page has a search function
• single search keywords work best

To receive notification of posts

• each resource with Comments has a bookmark icon
• toggle it to dark to be notified of new posts on that resource

❖ General Etiquette

The course website is a workplace platform

• make all communication professional and respectful

Any 9315-related discussion on external platforms

• is treated by UNSW the same as the course website

Summary: work hard and be nice to each other.

❖ Course Outline

All of the above is described in detail in the Course Outline.

Read it.

It forms a contract between you and me on how this course will run.

Additional resources:

• The Nucleus, in the Library
• Forms for various requests: unsw.to/webforms
• Student Counselling: student.unsw.edu.au/counselling