The course aims at providing the students with the necessary knowledge and skills to understand the concepts and problems involved in the implementation and usage of database management systems. Emphasis is given to the efficient usage of databases.

Knowledge:

• Fundamental concepts in database management systems.
• Indexing and hashing in databases
• Query processing and optimization in relational databases.
• Concurrency and transaction processing in databases.
• Basic notions of distributed databases.

Skills:

• Optimize databases for specific uses.
• Optimize queriesprocessing, using common tools in DBMSs for such purpose.
• Use of control mechanisms for concurrency
• Use of DBMSs for distributed databases.
• Advanced use of SQL and associated procedural languages.

Competences:

• Team work.
• Capacity to evaluate a solution based on experimental results.
• Critical evaluation.

DBMSs implementation

1.1.Storage and file structure

1.2.Indexing

1.3.Static and Dynamic Hashing.

SQL query processing and optimization

2.1.Processing: general schema; algorithms for relational algebra operators; operators composition – materialisation and pipelining; parallel algorithms

2.2.Optimization: cost measures; estimation of evaluation plans

Concurrency and transaction processing

3.1.Introduction to concurrency control in databases

3.2.Transaction processing and isolation levels

3.3.Lock and time-stamp based protocols

3.4.Multi-version protocols

3.5.Recovery in databases

Fundamentals of DBMS architecture

4.1.Centralised and client-server databases

4.2.Introduction to distributed databases: homogeneous and heterogeneous; query processing in distributed databases; transactions in distributed databases

Text Books

- Database System Concepts. A. Silberschatz, H. Korth and S. Sudarshan, McGraw-Hill, 6th Edition, 2010 (together with respective errata)
- Database Systems: the complete book. H. Garcia-Molina, J Ulmann and J. Widom. Prentice Hall, 2009

Manuals

Oracle 11g Documentation

Knowledge about relational databases and SQL.