COT3000

Database management and implementation

A Zaslavsky

6 points
* Four hours per week
* First, second semester
* Caulfield
* Prerequisites: Introductory database subjects

Objectives At the completion of this subject students should be able to use a third-generation programming language to access a relational database and perform a distributed database design; understand query optimisation and its impact on programming; and understand the database management systems recovery, concurrency and transaction management mechanisms.

Synopsis Embedding SQL in a host language, SQLCA - functions and values, implicit and explicit error handling; cursors - programming and when they are appropriate. Physical database design: transaction maps, trade-offs involved in designing for performance versus design for flexibility. Query optimisation: internal forms, query trees, access path selection - heuristics versus systematic, selection criteria. Database integrity mechanisms: recovery mechanisms and theory, concurrency mechanisms and theory, security mechanisms. Distributed database management systems: theory of distributed systems, problems of achieving distribution, current distributed systems. Database trends and state-of-the-art data models: federated and multidatabase system, current data models and their limitations, database research areas, object-oriented databases, extensible relational databases.

Assessment Examination (2 hours): 50%
* Two practical assignments: 50%

Prescribed texts

Elmasri R and Navathe S B Fundamentals of database systems 2nd edn, Benjamin Cummings, 1994