CS 338 - Winter 2005

Instructor

• Ashraf Aboulnaga
  Office: DC 3349
  Phone: ext. 7522
  

Lectures

Important Dates

• January 6: Class starts
• January 19, 5:00pm: Assignment 1 due
• February 8, 5:00pm: Assignment 2 due
• February 15: Midterm 7:00pm - 9:00pm. Makeup 5:00pm - 7:00pm same day.
  Room MC 2034 (Last names beginning with A-L) and MC 2038 (Last names beginning with M-Z).
  If you have a conflict with the midterm exam time and will need to come to the makeup, please let me know by the end of January.
• March 8, 5:00pm: Assignment 3 due
• March 29, 5:00pm: Assignment 4 due
• Wednesday, April 20: Final exam 2:00pm - 5:00pm in PAC 5

On-Line Information

• Course home page: http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs338/
• Course newsgroup: uw.cs.cs338
  Students are encouraged to use the newsgroup to ask questions that may be of interest to other students in the class.

Course Material

• Course Notes available online or at Pixel Planet.
• Text Book (Not Required): Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fourth Edition; Elmasri and Navathe; 2004
  • On reserve in the DC library, call number UWD 1538

Approximate Schedule

• 6/1: Introduction
• 13/1, 20/1, 27/1, and 3/2: SQL
• 10/2 and 17/2: Entity Relationship Modeling
• 24/2: Reading day, no class
• 3/3 and 10/3: Normalization and Functional Dependencies
• 17/3, 24/3, and 31/3: Database System Implementation

Evaluation

• Assignments: 30%
• Midterm: 30%
• Final: 40%

Assignments

• Assignment 1
• Assignment 2
  Solution queries.sql results.txt
• Assignment 3
  Solution: Question 1 Question 2 Create table statements
• Assignment 4
  Solution

Exams

Supplementary Material

• DB2 Hints for CS338. Read this to help you get started with using DB2.
• A complete reference manual for the SQL interface to DB2 can be found here. (Only accessible from within the University of Waterloo network)
• If you have your own PC, you can download a copy of DB2 for educational use. It is available for Linux and Windows. This is a large download, however, so probably impractical over a dialup connection.
• UNIX Help. Links to UNIX tutorials can be found below. Although there are many different versions of UNIX, the basic commands remain the same for all of them. However, methods for logging in and logging out are often quite different. Follow the instructions you are given when you get your account and not those in these tutorials.
  • MFCF FAQ
  • Learning the UNIX Operating System by Alicia F. Balsera of the University of South Florida

  The MFCF UNIX Consultants are also available to answer any UNIX questions you have. They can be found in MC 3011, Monday to Friday from 9:30am to 5:30pm.