Database Administration

Comp 305-001/488-002

Spring 2015: Tuesdays, 4:15-6:45, Corboy 208 (moved from 201)

Text: Elmasri & Navathe, Fundamentals of Database Systems 6e, Pearson 2010, ISBN-10: 0136086209, ISBN-13:  9780136086208

There will be some homework assignments during the semester, plus a midterm and final. The assignments will be worth about 15-20% of your grade, the midterm 30-35%, and the final about 50%. The midterm is set for March 10; the final will be Tuesday, April 28, at our usual time.

My general course groundrules are here.


Here's where to get MySQL Community Server, an open-source database. The current version is 5.6.22, although earlier versions will work for most things. (Version 5.7 is available in a "development milestone version"; I am not recommending that.)

I also recommend downloading the reference manual.

Note that Oracle, through its purchase of Sun, now owns the commercial part of MySQL. It appears that you do not have to create an account to download MySQL, though they ask you to.

If you wish, here is where to get Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (standard edition). I don't really recommend this, but if you get it to install, let me know. I was not able to install this on my linux system.

A much easier (though not exactly smaller) option, and the one I use, is to install an Oracle-provided virtual machine that has Oracle installed within it (Oracle bought VirtualBox too, perhaps for just this purpose). The link is here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/databaseappdev-vm-161299.html. This takes care of all those installation "rough edges". The virtual disk I downloaded for this is 8 GB (I don't know if that was its original size, or if it has grown).

Be aware that you might not be able to run VirtualBox and VMWare at the same time (if you're already a VMWare user).

We will also use Postgresql in class, at postgresql.org, in some class examples.

Further installation information is here (for MySQL and Oracle; previous versions)


Study Guides

Here is the midterm study guide.

Here is the final exam study guide.

Class notes and readings:

I'm migrating to putting the primary content into topic-specific files:

Week 1, Jan 13
Week 2, Jan 20        includes SQL homework 1, due Jan 30
Week 3, Jan 27
Week 4, Feb 3         includes SQL homework 2, due Feb 13
Week 5, Feb 10
Week 6, Feb 17
Week 7, Feb 24
Spring break
Week 8, Mar 10: midterm exam
Week 9, Mar 17
Week 10, Mar 24
Week 11, Mar 31     includes SQL homework 3, due April 7
Week 12, Apr 7
Week 13, Apr 14
Week 14, Apr 21

Examples


The company database (spreadsheet, files). To load this into MySQL, the two main files are the table definitions and the data-insertion commands. You can paste these in, or use the source command in MySQL.

The university database (E&N p 8, Fig 1.2) is here: student.text. I added three additional students, and their grades. You should be able to paste this in to MySQL.


We will consider some of the following topics: