CS 362: Theory of Databases

About this course

Database systems are ubiquitous. They are used in large-scale banking and commercial applications. They are also used on the desktop to index your photos or music files. They are particularly important to web applications. Most popular web sites use some sort of database to store all their interesting data -- blogs, wikis, forums, and most e-commerce sites (even many online games!) use databases as a backend. This means that a thorough understanding of how to design a good database is very useful, not only as a job skill, but as a tool you can use in building general purpose applications.

Database systems are an area in which open-source software has very definite advantages over commercially available software. Free programs such as mysql, sqlite, and postgreSQL are far more reliable, performant, and versatile than database systems that cost thousands of dollars. In this course, we will be using the postgreSQL database system. The advantages of postgreSQL are that it has excellent support for transactions, gives very good performance under high load, and is easy to administer. More importantly it has supports the latest SQL standards. It supports 160/179 mandatory components of the SQL:2008 standard (no existing database management system supports them all).

While the focus of this course is on database theory (i.e. design), we will really study three things:

• Database Design : How to write an efficient database which avoids data loss and data duplication
• Database Programming : How to develop queries and schemas in SQL
• Database Administration: How to set up, maintain, and troubleshoot a postgreSQL database

Syllabus

The syllabus for this course is here.

Other Resources

• Postgresql Manual
• VIM Quick Reference
• Unix Quick Reference