Course Information

Instructor        : Prof. Sampath Jayarathna, Web: http://www.cpp.edu/~ukjayarathna

Contact           : Office: 8-46, Email: ukjayarathna@cpp.edu, Phone: (909) 869-3145

Office Hours   : Tuesday and Wednesday, 1.00 PM – 3.00 PM, or email me for an appointment

Schedule         : Monday and Wednesday, Room: 8-004, Time: 6.00 PM – 7.50 PM

Website           : http://www.cpp.edu/~ukjayarathna/courses/w18/cs575      

Piazza              : www.piazza.com/csupomona/winter2018/cs575/home    

Blackboard      : https://blackboard.cpp.edu/

Prerequisites    : CS 435 with a grade of C or better or instructor’s consent.

What is this course about?

This course covers the advance concepts of database systems. Topics include data models (ER, relational, and others); query languages (relational algebra, SQL, and others); implementation techniques of database management systems (index structures, concurrency control, recovery, and query processing); management of semi-structured and complex data; distributed and noSQL databases.

Required / Optional materials

What you can expect from me:

I have an open door policy i.e., office visits. My posted office hours are times when I will make concerted effort to be available. Occasionally administrative meetings or emergencies may interfere with these posted times. The open door policy is: if my door is open, I am in and welcome walk-in visitations.  

I am committed to supporting students with disabilities. If you have challenges related to these issues or others I want to work with you to help you succeed. Please come and talk to me, since only you can properly communicate your situation to me.

Tentative Course Schedule

Topics: The tentative topics are posted at the schedule. Topics and specific course activities may change as needed.  PowerPoint slides will be available on the course web page after each lecture.

What you can give to the class:

It is extremely important for you to be engaged in the course. Otherwise, you will fall asleep and wonder what happened to your tuition dollars. So, I encourage you to ask questions during lecture and actively participate at the piazza forum. For the first few weeks, when asking a question at the class, state your name so that I know who you are.

Cell phones and Tardiness: You may have cell phones in class, but they must be on mute, or airplane mode and not answered until the end of class. You are expected to arrive on time so that you do not cause a disruption in the middle of class. I would like to start the class at the scheduled time. If you cannot make it on time or want to leave early for some reason, please let me know. Persistent tardiness will be noted.

Communication

Piazza: All questions will be fielded through Piazza. The primary benefit is that for many questions everyone can see the answer and other students can answer as well. I will endorse good student responses. Additionally, I expect you to actively participate in online discussions at Piazza. Over the course of the quarter, you should post at least one substantive, interesting post to the discussion forum. You must also respond to at least four posts made by others. You can also post private messages that can only be seen by the instructor. You will be signed up with your cpp email, but you may switch to another email.     

Blackboard: Blackboard will be used primarily for grade dissemination.

Email: If you send email to me, please be sure to include your name and the course number in the body of the e-mail. You should also use an appropriate subject line that looks like “CS575-Project” etc. Failure to follow these guideline may result in delayed response. Again, email should only be used in rare instances, I will probably point you back to Piazza if you have a question related to course materials and/or relevant to other students in the class.

Course Activities

The scores you receive on the various graded tasks in the class will be weighted as follows:

40% Project: Proposal (5 pts), Progress reports(5), Presentation and Demo (15 pts), Final Report (15 pts)
20% Final Exam
20% Homework Assignments (5)
10% Quizzes (2)
5(+1)% Research Paper Presentation + Extra Credit for report
5% Class Activities
101% Your Total Score for the class

Project: For the project, you will work in teams of either 4, or 5 students on a problem of your choosing (or instructor provided topics) that is interesting, significant, and relevant to database topics. The ultimate goal of your course project is to develop a backend to tackle some interesting real-world problem. At the end of the quarter, we will hold a competition during our regular class time for your project demonstration. All members of a group will receive the same grade on group work. Therefore, it is in your interest to choose other group members (ideally, first day of the class if possible) who have the same goal in the class as you do. It is also in your interest to work together and ensure that all tasks are completed effectively. Your scores on group work may be adjusted based on your contribution (peer-evaluation).

Final Exam: The final exam is comprehensive, closed books and will be held on Monday, March 12 from 6.00 pm to 8.00 PM. You may bring one standard 8.5" by 11" piece of paper with any notes you deem appropriate or significant (front and back). No iPads, iPhones, Blackberries, Android phones/tablets are allowed. Standard calculators are allowed.

Quizzes: Attendance in class and participation in the discussion are both important to your success in the course. As one crude measure of your participation and course preparation, you will have around 2 scheduled quizzes spread across the quarter. I will use them to gauge what topics we need to devote more time to and as an indicator that you were in class.

Homework: We will have 5 homework assignments, each worth 4% of your overall grade.

In Class Activities: We will have in class activities related to lecture topics to supplement the learning. I will ask you to bring a computing device (laptop, tablet) capable of handling modern database systems (ex. MySQL).

Research Paper Presentation: Technical presentations by students on emerging trends in database technology or tools. Each student will be responsible for planning a 5-minutes PowerPoint presentation. The rules and formats of presentation will be discussed in the lectures. The presenter must post presentation slides publically at Piazza to the entire class after the presentation (no points will be given if the slides are not posted within 3 days). Topics: After the first meeting, you must select a research paper for your presentation. Papers should be technically rigorous (10 pages or more) for the field of Computer Science and Database topics appear in IEEE or ACM journals or conferences (example: VLDB, SIGKDD, SIGMOD, CIKM, STOC, ICDE, SIGIR, TKDE).  You can ask the professor about other papers if you wish to check their suitability. No two students may select the same paper, and topics will be assigned on a first-come first-served basis. Students will volunteer each week for about 3 presentation slots available at the start of each class time.  To lock in a paper, post it in Piazza or let me know by the time you volunteer for the project. Students should consult the previous student presentations (available in Piazza) to avoid duplicate research papers. Extra Credit: You can get up to one point added to your final grade through preparing the research paper summary. Use the same paper to summarize, and provide your thoughts about this article.  Note: Borderline grades will not be boosted if extra credit is not submitted.

Grades

Final course grades are based on the overall average. You are guaranteed a grade based on a 10% window (e.g., 90-100% is an A). Overall class grade (not the individual grade) windows may be increased in size if the instructor finds it appropriate.

Notes: Final score in % will be rounded to the nearest whole number. Assigning + or – grades may be made at instructor’s discretion.)

A: 90-100, B: 80-89, C: 70-79, D: 60-69, Fail (Grade F): 0-59

Grading correction: Bring any assignment or exam grading correction requests to the instructor within 1 week of receiving the grade, or before the end of the quarter, whichever comes first. After that, your grade will not be adjusted. If you find a mistake in grading, please let the instructor know. Your grade will not be lowered.

Attendance, Make-ups, and Late Policies

All project reports, homework assignments are due at the beginning of class in all required forms (e.g., paper and/or submit on blackboard) on the due date. Changes to a submission’s due dates will be avoided because they are unfair to those students who have organized their time to complete the assigned work. Individual accommodations will be discussed if you have a valid medical excuse.

Project due dates will be set to give ample time for completion of the project and will not be extended save for the unexpected and unlikely major, long-lived catastrophe. Start projects early--last minute computer malfunctions will not be accepted as a reason for delaying a project report due date. For team project reports, only 1 report from the group required. It is you responsibility as a group to choose which team member responsible for the submission. Unless otherwise noted, all project reports should be submitted on paper at the beginning of the class.

An exam/quiz missed without an acceptable medical excuse will be recorded as a grade of zero (0). If you have a valid medical excuse, the missing component of your quiz grade will be computed based on the other parts of the course content. E.g.: A missed quiz with acceptable medical excuse will be assigned the average grade of all quizzes, at the option of the course instructor.

Homework assignments must be turned in by the due date and time in order to contribute to your grade. Each late submission will incur a 5 points penalty per day. No submission will be accepted after 3rd day and will be recorded as a grade of zero (0). There will be no makeup for homework assignments. If you have a valid medical excuse, the missing component of your grade will be computed based on the other parts of the relevant course content. E.g.: A missed homework with acceptable excuse will be assigned the average grade of all other homework components, at the option of the course instructor. Unless otherwise noted, all homework assignments should be submitted on paper at the beginning of the class. 

Academic Offenses

Scholarly dishonesty, especially plagiarism, will not be tolerated. Plagiarism is defined as "Failing to credit sources used in a work product in an attempt to pass off the work as one's own. Attempting to receive credit for work performed by another, including papers obtained in whole or in part from individuals or other sources."  Students found to have engaged in plagiarism will be punished severely, typically earning an automatic F in the course and being reported to the Office of Student Conduct and Integrity. The Office of Student Conduct & Integrity investigates issues of student misconduct to determine if there has been a violation of the Student Conduct Code. If students are found responsible for a violation, students receive educational sanctions which can range anywhere from warnings to expulsion from the California State University system. 

For the homework assignments, you may talk to any other class member or work in groups to discuss the problems in a general way. However, your actual detailed solution must be yours alone. If you do talk to other students, you must write on your homework assignment who it is that you discussed the problems with. Your submitted work must be written solely by you and not contain work directly copied from others.

Homework Collaboration Clarification: To clarify, your homework assignment is yours alone and you are expected to complete each homework independently. Your solution should be written by you without the direct aid or help of anyone else. However, I believe that collaboration and team work are important for facilitating learning, so I encourage you to discuss problems and general problem approaches (but not actual solutions) with your classmates. If you do have a chat with another student about a homework problem, you must inform me by writing a note on your homework submission (e.g., Bob pointed me to the relevant section for problem 3). The basic rule is that no student should explicitly share a solution with another student (and thereby circumvent the basic learning process), but it is okay to share general approaches, directions, and so on. If you feel like you have an issue that needs clarification, feel free to contact me.

Disability Resources

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal anti-discrimination statute that provides comprehensive civil rights protection for persons with disabilities. Among other things, this legislation requires that all students with disabilities be guaranteed a learning environment that provides for reasonable accommodation of their disabilities.

If you have a physical or a learning disability, please talk to me privately and/or contact the Disability Resource Center (DRC) at 909-869-3333. The location is at Bldg 9-103 to coordinate course accommodations. For further information, visit the DRC website at http://www.cpp.edu/~drc/index.shtml