CSE532: Advanced Database Systems (Fall `02)
Announcements


12/27/02
The final exam grades (revised) and the course letter grades (posted in SOLAR already) are now posted outside my office (key: last 2 digits of id and midterm grade, sort by id in ascending order).

You may calculate your course total score using the weight given in the first day of class (and posted on the course page). Below are the numeric ranges for the letter grades. Note that the grades of three people were lowered from A- to the B range due to wrongdoings during the final exam.

A+ 94-98 2
A  83-89 12
A- 75-80 9
B+ 69-71 6
B  62-66 4
B- worse 3
C+ worst 1
W        1
12/23/02
The final exam grades have been posted on Saturday (12/21), as some of you might have seen. Since these grades are low, the course grades will be curved.
12/17/02
All grades except for the final have been posted.
12/15/02
Boris found two more typos in solutions to practice problems (Thanks, Boris!):
1. Page 4 (at the end) the answer should have one less zero. Namely, 200,002,000 pages not 200,000,2,000.
2. Page 8 question 11 solution (3rd line near the middle of the line) should say the semijoin of T2 with T1 not T2 with T2.
12/3/02
Hard copies of Project Part II must be handed in to me in class on Thursday of next week. For your documentation, please also include commented code for your data generation. Demos will be scheduled for Friday of next week, and a signup sheet will be available in class Tuesday of next week.

I posted practice problems for the midterm exam. We will have a final review on Thursday of next week, during which questions about the practice problems will be answered. The final exam will be inclusive; its scope will include relational databases, object and object-relational databases, XML databases, query processing and optimization, distributed databases, and OLAP and data mining.

There is a slight difference between the slides posted and slides I used in lecture today: in the one I used, on slide 28 (semijoin introduction example, in Chapter 18), Step 2 sends Q to A (not sending to C), and Step 3 sends transcript to A and do join at A (not computing join at C and sending result to A), and total cost is even better (405K instead of 465K).

12/2/02
Boris Alyurov emailed me the following (Many thanks, Boris!); I then posted links to these quick references under Other Pointers on the main course page.

`While working on project2, I found the following documents very useful:

XPath 1.0:   http://www.deepx.com/resources/quickref/XPath-1.0.pdf

XSD: Structures 1.0:   http://www.deepx.com/resources/quickref/XSD1-1.0.pdf

XSD: Datatypes 1.0:   http://www.deepx.com/resources/quickref/XSD2-1.0.pdf

These are in-a-nutshell documents that are very useful as a quick reference.

I think some students can also benefit from these documents. Would you please post them on our class page?'

11/10/02
Added Handout P2 for Project Part II.
11/07/02
Added a link to XQuery Tutorial that includes types in XQuery.
11/06/02
Added a link to W3C XML Query page.

Added slides for new version of the part on XQuery in Chapter 17.

10/24/02
Added link the list of selected projects at the top of the main course page, and will post the demo schedule sheet outside my office. If you are interested in any of the projects, you are most welcome to attend the demos.
10/22/02
Hardcopies of Project Part I must be handed in to me this Thursday or at 8:30am this Friday. Demo will be scheduled next Friday, and a signup sheet for 20 minutes each slot will be available in class on Thursday; if you cannot do your demo next Friday for any legitimate reason, let me know by the due time also.

Please include your project description in your handin on Thursday, unless you want to use any original description you had given me.

10/17/02
Posted practice problems for the midterm exam, which is Tuesday the week after next. We will have a midterm review next Thursday, during which questions about the practice problems will be answered.
10/15/02
Alex Smirnov emailed me the following (Thanks very much, Alex!); I then posted links to these documents under Other Pointers on the main course page.

`After spending some time at DB2 documentation page I found out one manual that I think might be very useful in developing DB2 applications. It is called "Application Development Guide", the pdf file is here:

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/ad/v7/adg/db2a0e71.pdf

and HTML version is here:

http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/db2/udb/ad/v7/adg/db2a0/frame3.htm#db2a003

What I really liked there is that the material was organized much better than in SQL reference. For example, to find out everything about structured type one should look at chapter 12. It covers such topics as creation of such types, inserting tuples of these types (by using mutator and observer functions) and so on.

I think that other students might want to look at this manual as well so it might be worth placing these urls to the course page.'

10/08/02
New instructions for connecting to DB2 through JDBC have been posted on the Translab webpage at http://www.translab.cs.sunysb.edu/website/db2/db2connect.html. This information has also been added to the Project Part I Hints Page and mentioned under Other Pointers on the course page.

Both DB2net1 and DB2app1 samples there should work on both the Suns and the Grad PCs, but after testing all, our TA Bin found one problem with the DB2app1 sample on the Grad PCs. Our system admin expects to fix it next week; for now you could use one of the other three options.

My understanding is that DB2net1 is slower but is easier to work with, while DB2app1 requires the DB2 client software to be installed on the system and for the databases you will be accessing to be cataloged. You should be able to use DB2net1 from home with appropriate setup as indicated at the bottom of the new instruction page; you could also use DB2app1 from home if you also download appropriate DB2 client software from IBM website.

If you have any further problems connecting to DB2, send email to ntadminATcsDOTsunysbDOTedu and cc me.

10/04/02
Please see new instructions for connecting to DB2 through JDBC in the given zip file.
10/02/02
Correction to instructions for connecting to DB2 through JDBC is being worked out. Will let you know ASAP.
09/27/02
One of you forgot your umbrella in my office yesterday. I can't figure out who since many people came. If you were the one, come and get it.
09/24/02
To make sure that you have a complete application description, follow Homework 1 requirements, especially items (1)-(4), precisely. Numbering your data and operations could be helpful. You should make it explicit that your description satisfies the listed requirements.

If you have given me an incomplete description, you will need to fix it. For example, many descriptions I've been reading simply did not list precise queries or set-valued data. BTW, many of you did not include email addresses in what you've given me.

sbpub machines have been moved from Room 2206 to 1204.

09/19/02
Changed classroom from Roth Cafe 113 (also seen as Adineh 113, Unity Center, Roth Quad) to Computer Science 2129/31.

Added Handout P1 for Project Part I. Added also links to Trans Labs, IBM DB2 UDB V7 SQL References, Java and JDBC Specifications, etc.

Students working in the Solaris environment can use one of the sbpub machines in Room 2206.  Students working in NT can use the PCs in Room 1239, the graduate NT lab.

There is a correction to the little account information sheet you received today: There is a problem with using the dbregister command on our Solaris machines. The problem appears to be related to Solaris. In order to register on a Solaris (Sun) machine, you will need to

1. Be in your home directory and running X-windows and
2. Type: /usr/shareware/bin/database.dir/dbregister
in order to run the program. You cannot cd to the directory and run the program directly.

If you have any problems with your DB2 account, send email to ntadminATcsDOTsunysbDOTedu.

09/12/02
Added link to the list of Proposed Projects. As discussed in class, please form teams of two each and decide your course project; complete requirements for Part I of the project will be given out later next week, and you will be asked to prepare a complete description for the project you would like to do by Tuesday the week after, i.e., September 24.
09/09/02
Added Bin's office hours (Monday 1-3PM) and changed Annie's Thursday office hours (from 12:40-2PM to 2-3:20PM).
09/03/02
Added to course page final exam time, Handout H1 for Homework 1, and all slides from chapters of the textbook in order of discussion.
09/01/02
Course homepage is created with General Information, Course Outline, Lectures schedule, Handout Q for Questionnaire, Pointers to ghostview and gzip, and Requirements.

liuATcsDOTsunysbDOTedu