Week 06

Announcements

There seem to be problems with the shipping of the course book Database Systems: The Complete Book. I am in contact with the publisher and I hope the book will be available at the book store soon.

The first two chapters are available online (Chapter 1, Chapter 2). I will circulate Chapter 5.1 in paper during the first lecture. This should give you all the material needed for this week.

Lecture Monday (02.02.2009)

The first lecture will start with a short overview of the course organization. Then, after a short introduction to database systems, the relational data model will be introduced. This is the data model underlying nearly all common database systems. We will see how the SQL language can be used to define such models.

Topics

course organization, introduction to database systems, relational data model, SQL as a data definition language

Reading

Chapter 1, Chapters 2.1-2.3

Exercise Wednesday (04.02.2009)

Exercises 2.2.1-2.2.3, Exercises 2.3.1-2.3.2

Lecture Thursday (05.02.2009)

A relational database system has to allow flexible and efficient access to the data stored in the relations. The basic operations union, intersection, selection, projection, and various products provide a flexible framework for manipulating relations. Together, they constitute the "relational algebra" which is the topic of the second lecture.

Topics

relational algebra for sets, relational algebra for bags

Reading

Chapter 2.4, Chapter 5.1