TDBC86 Home Page, Fall 2001

Database Concepts
Fall 2001

Important Notes:

Make sure that you get the third edition of the textbook:
R. Elmasri and S. B. Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems, Third Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2000. ISBN: 0-8053-1755-4 (hardcover); 0201-54263-3 (international softcover).

Syllabus and Other Course Information:

Course syllabus: PDF
Slide on grading method: PDF

Comments regarding specific lectures and issues:

Overhead Slides: (PDF4 denotes a PDF file with four slides to one page.)

Introductory slides: PDF PDF4
Slides on entity-relationship modelling: PDF PDF4
Slides on basic concepts of the relational model: PDF PDF4
Slides on conversion of an ER description to a relational schema: PDF PDF4
Slides on queries and query languages: PDF PDF4
Slides on SQL: PDF PDF4
Slides on join notation: PDF PDF4
Slides on updates to databases: PDF PDF4
Slides on views: PDF PDF4
Slides on views: PDF PDF4
Slides on database access via programming languages: PDF PDF4
Slides on the use of ODBC: PDF PDF4
A note on a limitation of support for the SQL UPDATE command in Access97: PDF
Slides on functional dependencies and normalization: PDF PDF4
Slides on physical database design: PDF PDF4
Slides on physical database organization and query processing: PDF PDF4
Slides on the database system catalog: PDF PDF4
Slides on transaction processing and concurrency control: PDF PDF4
Slides on recovery techniques: PDF PDF4
Slides on security and authorization: PDF PDF4
Slides on limitations of the relational model: PDF PDF4
Slides on object-oriented concepts: PDF PDF4
Slides on object-relational concepts: PDF PDF4

Obligatory Exercises and Projects:

Obligatory Exercise 1 (Due November 16, 2001): PDF
Obligatory Exercise 2 (Due November 23, 2001): PDF
Obligatory Exercise 3 (Due November 30, 2001): PDF
- VBA script to generate the test database for Obligatory Exercise 3: VBA
Obligatory Exercise 4 (Due December 7, 2001): PDF
Obligatory Exercise 5 (Due December 14, 2001): PDF
ODBC Software Project (Due December 21, 2001 or January 10, 2002): PDF

Additional Exercises (for in-class solution and/or for your edification):

Relational algebra / calculus exercises (In-class: November 14): PDF
Solutions to the above exercises: PDF PDF4
Exercises on recovery techniques (In-class: December 12 or 13): PDF

Database Programs to Generate the "Company" Database of the Textbook:

Generate in Access using Visual Basic for Applications: VBA
Generate in Access using Visual Basic for Applications (alternate): VBA
Generate in the Leap database system: Leap
Generate in any ODBC-compliant system using C: C/ODBC

Table data include (.h) file for the above program: H/ODBC
Tuple data include (.h) file for the above program: H/ODBC

Example C programs with ODBC calls:

Connect to an ODBC database: C
- Borland C++ Builder main file for this example: C++
Execute a simple SQL query: C
Repeatedly execute an SQL query with interactive input parameters: C
Test for a null value in a retrieved tuple: C

Information about the examination:

Disclaimer: The examination available below was prepared for a previous offering of the course. The topics covered were similar, but not identical. Therefore, not all problems are necessarily relevant to the current course offering. Also, there is absolutely no guarantee that the examination problems for the current offering will be similar in either form or content.

Examination from last year: PDF
Further information on the examination:
External Links:
- SQL FAQ (caution: several years old): HTML
- JCC's SQL standards page: HTML
- SQL tutorial: HTML
- The SQL airport: HTML
- LEAP home page: HTML
- The Open Group SQL CLI (sadly, how to buy it only): HTML
- Microsoft documentation on ODBC: HTML
- IEEE Data Engineering Bulletin: HTML
- ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD): HTML