• Time: 9:05m--9:55pm Monday/Wednesday/Friday, Starting Aug. 27, 2012, Monday
  
• Venue: HCB 310 (map)
• Instructor: Peixiang Zhao
  • Office: 262 James Love building, Phone: 645-0346, Email: zhao AT cs DOT fsu DOT edu
  • Office hours: Monday: 10am-11am; Wednesday: 10am-11am, or by appointment.
• Teaching Assitants: Yu Zhang
  • Office: 106A MCH (Carothers Hall). Email: yzhang@cs.fsu.edu
  • Office hours: Tuesday: 1pm-2pm, Thursday: 1pm-2pm.
• Web site: http://www.cs.fsu.edu/~zhao/cop4710fall12/

Textbooks and readings

• (Required textbook) Database Management Systems 3rd edition, by Raghu Ramakrishnan and Johannes Gehrke. ISBN: 978-0072465631, McGraw-Hill, 2002.
• (Recommended reference) Database Systems: The Complete Book 2nd edition, by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman and Jennifer Widom. ISBN: 978-0131873254, Prentice Hall, 2008.
• (Recommended reference) Database System Concepts 6th edition, by Avi Silberschatz, Henry Korth and S. Sudarshan. ISBN: 978-0073523321, McGraw-Hill, 2010.
• (Recommended reference) Fundamentals of Database Systems 6th edition, by Ramez Elmasri, and Shamkant Navathe. ISBN: 978-0136086208, Addison-Wesley, 2011.

Prerequisites

Students should come with good programming skills. COP3330: Object-oriented Programming and MAD2104: Discrete Mathematics or equivalents courses are required. If you are not sure whether you have the right background, please contact the instructor.

Note: We will not cover programming-specific issues in this course.

Format and activities

The course is lecture-based with two examinations (midterm and final). There are individual assignments and a group-level programming project. In order to encourage attending classes and participating dicussions, there will be several in-class quizzes for students.

• Lectures and Class Participation: We strongly encourage (and appreciate!) students to attend classes, because effective lectures rely on students' participation to raise questions and contribute in discussions. Although we probably will have a large class, we will strive to maintain interactive class discussions if possible. We will provide lecture notes before class, which will be posted on the Schedule page.
• Questions: We encourage students discussing their questions and problems first with their group peers and classmates. This way, you can get immediate help and also learn to communicated "professionally" with your peers. In any case for more thorough discussion, come to the office hours of TA's and the instructor's. Any announcement will be posted on the Announcement page. Make sure to check it frequently enough to stay informed.
• Assignment: There will be a few written assignments spaced out over the course of the semester. All the assignments should be done individually by the students. Assignments should be submitted before the class begins on the due dates.
• Projects: There will be a semester-long project, which involves significant database application programming. The project will be structured with several milestones due in the course of the semester, leading to a demo and write-up near the end of the semester.

Course Objectives

To learn the basic principles of designing and implementing an application using relational database systems. To understand in depth how a relational database application works for designing (the schema for), mapping and querying structured data. To realize the importance of social, technological and ethical issues involved in data management.

Course Discription

As the first introductory course for databases, COP4710 studies the fundamentals of relational database management systems (RDBMS). Meterials include, but are not limited to, the ER(Entity-Relationship) model and its mapping to the relational data model, the algebriac language in the relational data model and its relationship to the commercial relational query language: SQL, database design that conforms to different normal forms, database applications, database indexing, transaction management, recovery and other advanced topics. Furthermore, students will participate in a semester-long project and build a web-based database system (e.g., an online bookstore) starting with a customer specification. In summary, this course is about the principles of designing and developing applications using relational database systems.

General Policy

• The university policy naturally applies here in our course. You need to check it carefully and pay attention to the attional policies of COP4710 listed as follows.
• You are allowed to discuss written assignments, however, any such discussion must be clearly acknowledged on the submitted solution. Your solution should be stapled together and neatly prepared;
• The programming project will be carried out in a group-based fashion with one or two students involved. No inter-team collaboration is allowed;
• You are bound to attend all lectures unless notifying the instructor in advance with reasonable excuses.

Collaboration/Academic Honesty

All course participants must adhere to the academic honor code of FSU which is available in the student handbook. All instances of academic dishonesty will be reported to the university. Evey student must write his/her own homework/code (unless you are in the same group for the programming progject). Showing your code or homework solutions to others is a violation of academic honesty. It is your responsibility to ensure that others cannot access your code or homework solutions. Consulting related textbooks, papers and information available on Internet for your coding assignment and homework is fine. However, copying a large portion of such information will be considered as academic dishonesty. If you borrow a small piece of any such information, please acknowledge that in your assignment. Please see the following web site for a complete explanation of the Academic Honor Code.

Late Policy and Make-up Exams

• Late assignments will not ordinarily be accepted. If, for some compelling reason, you cannot hand in an assignment on time, please contact the TA or instructor as far in advance as possible. Written assignments or project deiliverables are due at the beginning of a class, you should hand them in at the beginning of the class;
• No credit will be given to late programming projects;
• No make-up exams (except under extremely unusual circumstances).

Students with Disabilities

Students with disabilities needing academic accommodation should: (1) register with and provide documentation to the Student Disability Resource Center; (2) bring a letter to the instructor indicating the need for accommodation and what type.

Grading Policy

The course grade will break down as follows,

• Assignment:20%;
• Project: 25%
• Midterm exam: 20%;
• Final exam:30%;
• Quizzes: 5%.

• A: 100 - 90;      A-: 90 - 85;
• B+: 85 - 80;      B: 80 - 70;      B-: 70 - 65;
• C: 65 - 60;       D: 60 - 50;
• F: 50 - 0.