Course description, from the catalogue:

COM 1317 Transaction Processing Systems -- 4 QH

Focuses on the concepts and practice of modern transaction processing systems in a distributed setting. Describes the overall architecture of systems such as TP monitor, recovery manager, log manager, and lock manager. Discusses the principles of DO/UNDO/REDO logging such as the write-ahead log rule and the force log-on-commit rule. Describes compensation log records, checkpoint and restart recovery procedures, two-phase commit, lock tables, granularity of locking, and two-phase locking. 4 QH credit Prerequisite: COM 1201, COM 1130, COM 1315.

Institution:

Northeastern University, and the College of Computer Science, Boston, MA.

Instructor:

Professor Robert P. Futrelle   Email me at: futrelle@ccs.neu.edu.
You can also use a web form to contact me without needing email access at all.

Office:

115 Cullinane

Hardcopy mailbox:

161 Cullinane

Telephone:

Office 373-4239

Teaching Assistant:

Jing Shan

Office : 11CN

Phone : 373-8091

Email : jshan@ccs.neu.edu

Course Syllabus and Calendars:

See the separate page for the detailed Course Syllabus and Calendar for COM1317 Spring 2001.

Textbook:

Selected chapters from: Databases and Transaction Processing: An Application-Oriented Approach by Lewis, Bernstein and Kifer (Addison-Wesley, 2001)
Available at Gnomon Copy, on Huntington Avenue, across from the YMCA.

Personal Help:

If you need help at any time, find me in my office, call, or send email, or ask in class to set up an appointment. My office hours and normal advising hours are Wednesdays, 3:30-5:30.

On-line help:

For more info on most anything related to transaction processing, or most anything else use google.com. Many people consider it the Number 1 search engine.

Classes:

Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:35-2:40pm (Sequence 4). Room 245CN

Quizzes and Exams:

There will be three short quizzes, as well as a Midterm and a Final. All are closed-book, no calculators.

Grading:

The grading policy will be worked out on the basis of the exact nature of the various tests, their level of difficulty, etc. I pay special attention to the rankings of all students on the tests. Though this results in some "curving" of the grades, it is still possible, at least in principle, for everyone to do well. There are no values set aside in the beginning for the fraction of students getting particular grades.

Honors Adjunct:

There is an Honors Adjunct for this course. It will focus on learning how databases, and secure transaction processing in particular, work for World Wide Web applications.

Go to COM1317 home page.

Return to Prof. Futrelle's home page