1. Course Overview - Database Systems
Syllabus, Schedule, Course Content

2. Course Overview
Storage of and access to physical databases including indexing, hashing, and range accesses. Relational data models, database design principles, query languages, query optimization, transaction processing and recovery techniques. Object-oriented and distributed databases.

3. Warning: It will be LOT of programming!
Why should you care?
Databases draw together all of the theory and techniques that you’ve learned about in most of your previous computer science courses.
You will learn how to write a database system to solve the kinds of problems you may face in a career as a programmer.
You will gain a deeper understanding of how databases work and be able to write better code using them.
Warning: It will be LOT of programming!

4. Who am I?
Dr. Joshua Nahum
Teaching Specialist for the Department of Computer Science and Engineering
You can call me "Josh".

5. Online Enabled Course
All material with be provided to you via the website and related sources.
No textbook.
Synchronized course (meaning material for the class will be released week by week).
Doing well in this class requires more self-discipline than in-person classes, so seek help if you fall behind.

6. Grading 50% - Projects 20% - Homeworks 30% - Exam
Projects: There will be 6 projects totaling 50% of your final grade.
Homeworks: There will be at least 12 homeworks; the top 10 homeworks will each count for 2% of your grade.
Exams: There will be a single in-person exam on about 2/3 of the way through the semester.

7. Projects
Most of the projects will be building an increasing complex Database Management System, which can respond to SQL queries.
All of the projects must be done independently, meaning you need to write and understand every line of code you submit. You may ask questions on Piazza or to other students, but you may not share code. Please come to office hours if you need assistance.
Projects will be due at 10pm on their due date. Late projects will lose 10% of their grade per 24 hours. No project can be more than 2 days late.

8. Homeworks
Homeworks will be done through Mimir Classroom and are due at 10pm on Thursdays.
There will be at least 12 homeworks assigned, but only the top 10 highest homework grades will be used. The others will be dropped.
There is no late period for homeworks. If you haven't submitted the assignment by 10pm, you may receive a 0.0.

9. Exam There is no final in this course.
There is one exam. It is open note, and the details can be found in the link on the Schedule webpage.
Important Note: To pass the class, you must receive 50% of the points on the exam. If you fail the exam, please read the syllabus concerning potential options.

10. Academic Honesty
Do your own work! You may use the web as a resource as long as you give credit and don’t try to pawn off your work on someone else.
Do not copy another student's code or exam answers, use code implemented by someone else, use code independently implemented by someone else, provide false information to the instructor about matters related to the course, or facilitate another student in any of these activities.
We will be using plagiarism detection software. Violation of these rules will result in a final grade of 0.0.

11. Cheating
As many of you may know, there are websites where you can post assignments and homework problems, and others will answer/solve them (often for a fee). Chegg.com is a prominent example.
Posting such content is illegal, and violates MSU's intellectual property on course content. If I find assignment content there, I will take legal action.
Viewing/using/altering solutions found on websites like Chegg is also an act of academic dishonesty and possibly plagiarism.
Anyone found cheating with such websites for this course will fail the class and have an Academic Dishonesty Report filed. No exceptions.

12. Prerequisite Knowledge
Ability to write classes and functions in Python 3.
Ability to use the Unix command line and ssh
What we will cover:
Using databases (SQL)
Implementing a simple database system
Comparing different database systems (NoSQL)

13. Recommended Textbook
Database Systems: The Complete Book by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Jennifer Widom
Entirely optional but it is a good resource for the content covered in this course.

14. Late Policy Which of these can be turned in late? Projects Homeworks
Exam