COSC265-13S2 (C) Semester Two 2013

Relational Database Systems

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 8 July 2013
End Date: Sunday, 10 November 2013
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 21 July 2013
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 6 October 2013

Description

An introduction to database systems, database design, relational databases and database management systems.

The course deals with data models and database systems and has been designed to enable you to understand the theoretical basis of databases and be able to apply that knowledge in developing and using relational databases. The lectures are organized around the database design lifecycle, while in the labs students go through the process of developing small databases from given requirements. This course is a prerequisite for SENG365 (Web Computing Architectures).

Learning Outcomes

After completing this course, students will be able to
- design databases well
- use relational algebra to query databases
- use SQL to query, define, populate, update and manage databases
- understand the functions of Relational Database Management Systems

Prerequisites

(1) COSC121 or INFO125 or ACIS125; (2) 15 points from Mathematics, Statistics, Engineering Mathematics or MSCI110. MATH101 is not acceptable. MATH120/STAT101 are strongly recommended.

Restrictions

COSC205, COSC226

Timetable Note

There will be three lectures per week (times to be announced), which will be given by Prof Tanja Mitrovic (email tanja@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz). Labs will be held in lab 2 (Erskine). Please see information in Learn related to tutorials.

Course Coordinator

Tanja Mitrovic

Tutor

Yalini Sundralingam

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Assignment 25%
Quizzes 5%
Lab Test 20%
Exam 50%


No assignments will be accepted after the drop dead date (i.e. a week after the assignment is due). The penalty for the late submission of an assignment will be an absolute deduction of 15% of the maximum possible mark.
In order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:
a) The university has adopted a common scale for converting marks to grades. According to this scale, an average mark of 50% is sufficient to pass the course (i.e. to achieve a C-), with an average mark of 55% a C grade is achieved and so forth. We apply this conversion scale to the average marks students achieve over all assessment items.
b) You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.
Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year.

Textbooks / Resources

Recommended Reading

Elmasri, Ramez. , Navathe, Sham; Fundamentals of database systems ; 5th ed; Pearson/Addison Wesley, 2007.

Previous editions of the same textbook are also suitable.
The COSC265 lecture notes and all additional material will be available via Learn.

Notes

Important documents
COSC265 handouts will be available in Learn. Notices about this course will be posted to the course forum in the Learn system . CSSE students will also be made members of a class called "CSSE Notices", where general notices will be posted that apply to all classes (such as information about building access or job opportunities).
There are several important documents available online about departmental regulations, policies and guidelines at the following site. We expect all students to be familiar with these. http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/regulations/

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $719.00

International fee $3,325.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Computer Science and Software Engineering .

All COSC265 Occurrences

  • COSC265-13S2 (C) Semester Two 2013