Class information

Room: Science Center 246
Class: Tuesday, Thursday 2:40 - 3:55pm, SCI 246
Lab: Monday 2 - 3:30 p.m., SCI 252
Professor: Charlie Garrod
Office: Science Center 255
Phone: 6071
Office hours: 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. or by appointment, or you can stop by whenever my door is open.

Welcome to CS97. This year's topic is data management systems. Our goal is to understand the fundamental problems of data management and the roles played by modern data management systems. With popular sites like Google and Facebook, GPS-enabled mobile computers in our pockets, and an increasing use of networked devices and sensors in our everyday environment, you are surely aware of the explosion in the amount of data we collect and share. In this course, we will study the question of how this data should be stored and accessed, so that the data remains valid and useful as it is updated and used by many simultaneous users.

Early in this course we will focus on traditional relational database systems, including the relational model, transactions, consistency, concurrency control, indexes, and query processing. As the semester progresses we'll increasingly consider systems with non-traditional requirements, implementations, or features, including stream databases, non-relational systems, and relaxed consistency models.

Your work in this course will consist of regular out-of-class reading and written reactions to the reading, presentation of papers in class, several lab assignments, and a longer-term research project and paper. By the end of the course you will demonstrate the following skills:

• Understand the fundamental problems in data management and analyze various solutions to these problems.
• Analyze and critcally discuss research papers in writing and in class.
• Formulate and evaluate a hypothesis by proposing, implementing, and evaluating a project.
• Write a coherent, complete paper describing and evaluating a project.
• Orally present a clear and accessible summary of research work.

There is no required textbook for this course. Many of our readings will come from Database Management Systems by Ramakrishnan and Gehrke or from Readings in Database Systems by Hellerstein and Stonebraker. I will provide online links or copies of all required reading; you probably will need to access these links and copies from the on-campus network. Also, a copy of Ramakrishnan and Gehrke is on Honors reserve at the Cornell Library.

Grading

Grades will be weighted as follows:

20%	Paper reaction notes and participation
15%	Paper presentations
15%	Lab assignment(s)
50%	Course project
	5% Proposal and lit review 10% Checkpoints and rough draft 10% Reviewer comments 10% Project presentation 15% Final paper

Late policies

This course has distinct late policies for the lab assignments and for the reaction notes and project work:

• For the labs, you may turn in your work seven late days without penalty for each lab assignment. In other words, you may turn in lab 0 seven days late, and then turn in lab 1 seven days late, and so on. Lab work more than seven days late will be accepted only in extreme circumstances, such as your death.
• For all other work in the course, no late work will be accepted except for similarly extreme circumstances approved by the professor in advance of the deadline. This includes reaction notes for each reading assignment and all work for the course project, such as the proposal documents, drafts, in-class presentations, and final work.

Academic integrity

Strong academic integrity is expected of every student. Plagiarism, cheating, and academic dishonesty will be reported to the College Judiciary Committee and dealt with severely. You may not hand in work done by someone else as your own. You may discuss ideas and problems with others on a general level and such discussions are encouraged, but you must credit any collaborators or resources used in the completion of your assignments and projects. Please see me if there are any questions about what is permissible.

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Schedule

This schedule will change as needed during the semester: