Uppsala universitet

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Dept of IT

Lab course in Database Design, Fall 2008

Contents



News

  • The hard deadline is Thursday, Jan 22, 2009. After that day, no more revisions will be accepted. Students who wish to submit assignments after that will have to wait until next time the course is given (summer 2009).
  • 2008-11-30: Some examples of stored procedures and triggers are provided in the Assignment 3 section below.
  • 2008-11-23: Deadline of Assignment 2 is moved to Tuesday Dec 2, 8:00 AM.
  • 2008-11-30: We provide a non-official Linux build of AmosII release 11 v 1.
  • 2008-11-23: The three tutorials L2a, L2b, L2x are the same. Choose one or none. (They are not mandatory!)
  • 2008-11-23: Deadline of Assignment 1 is moved to Thursday Nov 27, 8:00 AM.
  • 2008-10-27: Page created

Assistants

  • Gyozo Gidofalvi
    Office hours:      [To be announced]
  • Erik Zeitler
    Office hours:
    w. 45 Friday Nov 7 13:15-15:00
    w. 46 Monday Nov 10 10:15-12:00
    w. 47 Monday Nov 17 13:15-15:00
    Tuesday Nov 18 10:15-12:00
    w. 48 Tuesday Nov 25 10:15-12:00
    w. 49 Monday Dec 1 13:15-16:00

Registration

The assignments should be solved in groups of 2 persons. Only in special cases we will accept groups of 3 or 1 students. It is your responsibility to form the groups. Please do not register groups until you are sure of all the members of the group.

The registration works as follows:

  • Follow the Online registration link to the registration page.
  • Register student:
    1. Choose "Register as a new student".
    2. Fill the form and click the "Register-button".
    3. A confirmation page will show.
  • Register group:
    1. Choose "Register a group of students".
    2. Fill the form with each student username and password. This step can only be done once, i.e. you must enter ALL group members data at this point. Click "Register group-button".
    3. A confirmation page will display your group number and your assistant.

    Online Registration (it will be available very soon) 

Supervision

Every group will be assigned automatically (at registration time) an assistant. This assistant will grade the group's assignments and provide consultations to her/his groups during times scheduled for the purpose. There are no bookings on the computer labs for this course, so make sure to plan your work since it can get crowded during peak times.

Links to various sources of information below:

Submitting

All reports must be handed in paper form in the pigeonhole of the responsible assistant.

For each assignment there is a deadline. Assignments submitted before deadline will be graded within a week after the deadline. Assignments that are submitted after deadline will be graded whenever we have time (possibly after the final exam). There is a hard deadline after which no more assignments can be submitted. The hard deadline is Thursday, Jan 22, 2009.

If you fail on an assignment, you have to complete it and submit it again according to the assistants' comments. Failed assignments can be collected only from the correspondent assistant during his/her consultation time.

Assignments

Assignment 1: Normalization (paper lab).

  • Background reading: [ Padron-McCarthy/Risch: Chapter 11 | E/N: Chapter 3, 10, 7.1, 11.1, 11.2 ]
  • Instructions: [ DOC | PDF ]
  • Tutorial:
  • Deadline: Monday Nov 24, 8:00 Thursday Nov 27, 8:00

Assignment 2: Database Design and ER Modeling

  • Background reading: [Padron-McCarthy/Risch: Chapter 2, 3, 7, 9 | E/N: Chapter 3, 4, 8 ]
  • Instructions: [ DOC | PDF ]
  • Lab:
  • Deadline: Monday Dec 1, 8:00 Tuesday Dec 2, 8:00
Mimer is installed on the Solaris computers. If you prefer, you may use your PC to do this assignment. NB: We cannot provide any PC support or installation assistance. Mimer Instructions for Solaris and Windows.

Useful MIMER SQL Documentation, in Mimer User's Manual, for this assignment:

  • Data Definition Language, DDL (chapter 7),
  • Data Manipulation (chapter 5),
  • BSQL commands (chapter 9),
  • Error handling (chapter 11)

Assignment 3: SQL Queries and Views. Assertions, Triggers, and Stored Procedures.

  • Background reading: [Padron-McCarthy/Risch: Chapter 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 | E/N: Chapter 8, 9.2]
  • Instructions: [ DOC | PDF ]
  • Lab:
  • Deadline: Thursday, Dec 4, 8:00
  • Examples of stored procedures and triggers

Assignment 4: Object Oriented Databases

Choose one of the following tasks:
  • Stock market application [ DOC | PDF ] Test data for the stock market application.
  • Molecular geometry application [ DOC | PDF ]
  • Scientific mesh-discretized database [ DOC | PDF ]
  • Background reading: [ Padron-McCarthy/Risch: Chapter 16 | E/N: Chapter 20, 21, 22 ]
  • Lab:
  • Deadline: Monday Dec 15, 8:00

F.A.Q.

    Q: Can I submit my solution of an assignment by email?
    A: Yes, you can submit your solution by email. You have to prepare pdf file of the report and specify in the subject field of the message the course name and assignment number.
    Q: Is the attribute Address from the table Customer (Assignment 1) atomic?
    A: It is up to you to decide whether the attribute is atomic or not.
    Q: How to set up Mimer SQL 9.2 on a PC?
    Do not forget to create a new databank called 'Company'.
    Q: Can I list the tables in a Mimer database?
    A: Yes. Try
      SELECT table_name FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES where table_schema='SYSADM';
    Read more about it in Mimer reference manual.
    Q: My Mimer database on Solaris is locked. How to start it?
    A: You have probably closed the window without closing the connection to Mimer by exit;. Check the process ID of the bsql process you started and kill it:
      ps -f    --> see the PID of bsql, make sure the UID is yours
      kill PID or kill -9 PID , where PID is replaced by the value above