Course description, from the catalogue:

COM 3315 Principles of Database Systems
Studies history, principles and open questions in database management system research; SQL programming using a database management system; normalization and entity-relationship design; access methods; query optimization and other algorithms used in database system software. Discusses selected topics from distributed database systems, parallel database systems, and object-oriented database systems. Computer Science graduate students will have priority for enrollment in this course.

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

Course Syllabus and Calendars:

See the separate page for the detailed Course Syllabus and Calendar for COM3315 Spring 2002.

Textbook:

O'Neil, P., and O. N. Elizabeth. 2001. Database Principles, Programming, and Performance 2nd ed. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco. Authors' home page here.

Reserve books:

The textbook and an SQLJ book are on Reserve in Snell Library. The library has approximately 500 books on databases. Search the Library collection here.

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 Mondays, 3:30-5:30.

On-line help:

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

Classes:

Tuesdays 6-9 pm. Room 245CN

Exams:

There will be a Midterm and a Final. All are open book, open notes.

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.

Go to COM3315 home page.

Return to Prof. Futrelle's home page