CS450 Database Concepts, Section 002, Fall 2006

Tuesday, 7:20pm -- 10:00pm

Innovation Hall 132

Prof. Yih (Ian) Huang
Office: S&T II, Rm. 443
email: huangyih@cs.gmu.edu
Office Hours: Thursday 3:00 to 5:00pm and by appointment

Course homepage: http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~huangyih/450

DESCRIPTION

This course covers from basics to intermediate knowledge for the design, implementation and use of relational database systems. The main topics include the Entity-Relationship (ER) and Entity-Enhanced Relationship (EER) models for database design, Relational Algebra (RA), Structured Query Language (SQL), SQL programming techniques, functional dependencies and normalization, and security. Students will practice to design, develop, and implement a relational ORACLE database, and use the database for queries, transaction processing, and report generation.

Prerequisites

Grade of C or better in CS 310 and CS 330.

Grading Policy

Midterm exam 25%, Homework/project/quiz 35%, Final 40%.
Missed Midterm and Final exams must be arranged with the instructor BEFORE the exam date.
Quizez also serve as roll calls; there will be no makeups for missed quizez.
Late homework/projects lose 20% credit within 2 days after deadlines and will not be accepted three days after due, unless under prearranged conditions.
All students are expected to abide by the Honor Code as stated in the GMU catalog and elaborated for Computer Science.
Grading is proficiency-based (no curve), cutoffs will be in the vicinity of (but not higher than) A > 95%, A- > 90%, B+ > 85%, B > 80%, B- > 75%, C > 70%, and D > 60%.

Course notices and assignments will be provided via email. Students are responsible to have a GMU email account and check that account periodically. Course materials (for example, copies of slides) will be available on the course homepage 24 hours before they are presented in class. Students are responsible for assigned readings and all material outlined in lecture slides.

Textbooks

Fundamentals of Database System, by Elmasri and Navathe, 5th ed., Addison Wesley, 2007.
ORACLE Programming --- A Primer, by Rajshekhar Sunderraman, Addison Wesley, 2004.

Important Dates

Aug. 29th: first class
Sept. 12th: last day to add to class; last day to drop without tuition penalty
Oct. 10th: no class due to Columbus day
Oct. 17th: Midterm exam (tentative)
Dec. 5th: last class
Dec. 12th: Final exam

Yih (Ian) Huang
Dept. of Computer Science
Office: ST2 Room 443
Email: huangyih@cs.gmu.edu