Syllabus/Course Requirements

Course Number: CSCI 470

Course Name: Database Management Systems (3 units)

Prerequisite: CSCI 112 (Programming and Algorithms II) or faculty permission

Instructor: Dr. Melody Stapleton

Office Hours: TuTh 2-3:30 pm, and Wed 3-5 pm in OCNL 208

Faculty Phone: 530.898.5617

E-mail address: melodystapleton@digitalpath.net or mjstapleton@csuchico.edu

Web page: www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~melody/ (look for Fall 2008 - CSCI 470)

Textbook: Fundamentals of Database Systems, Fifth Edition by Elmasri and Navathe, Addison Wesley, 2007(Required), ISBN-10: 0321369572 | ISBN-13: 9780321369574

Course Description: The course will cover the basic concepts in database management. These include the levels of architecture of a DBMS; database design (including object-oriented analysis and design techniques); relational and object-oriented databases; query languages; transaction processing; recovery and concurrency and modern database architectures. Students will work in teams to complete a database course project for a local business, 916 Medical Home Spa.

Evaluation Procedures:

1)Course Project – Design and Implementation of a Database with Web Interface

Project Phases:

First Phase: Proposal Phase – 20 points (CR/NC) + 5 points for your written individual evaluation– due Thursday, September 18, in class (may be submitted with corrections with Phase 2 Design

Second Phase: Design Phase – 40 points + 5 points for your written individual evaluation – due Thursday, October 23, in class (may be resubmitted with corrections once)

Third Phase: Implementation Phase – 25 points + 5 points for your individual written evaluation – due at Final Exam

Total Project Points = 100 for 35% of Course Grade

2) Midterm Exam for 20% of Course Grade

3) Final Exam for 30% of Course Grade

4) HW and Quizzes – 10% of Course Grade – Project Leaders get automatic 10%

Group Project: Web site and Database for 916 Medical Home Spa

See more links on Dr. Stapleton’s web pages for the details. You will be grouped into teams to complete a group project.  The teams will compete against each other to come up with the best design and best overall project as judged by the Client and Dr. Stapleton. Each team will complete each of the Project Phases: proposal, design, and implementation as a group effort. The Design and Implementation Phase are briefly discussed below. See details of the Proposal Phase, Design Phase and Implementation Phase on the relevant web pages as links off the 470 Course Home Page.

Proposal Phase: This is an initial design document to “get the ball rolling” on the project. Here you will give a brief written description of the overall project, an first cut at a graphical entity-relationship model, and a first cut at the key business processes in the form of use cases.

Design Phase: Complete a logical design of a database for a local business, the 916 Medical Home Spa. The product of this phase will be a formal report which summarizes your design and includes Use Cases, an Object Model and Entity-Relationship Model, a Dynamic Model including scenarios and state transition diagrams, a Data Dictionary, and the User-Views as Prototyped Web Pages. There are a number of student example projects posted within the course web pages. You will turn in your Design Phase before taking your midterm exam. You will receive feedback and a score for your initial submission for the Design Phase. You can correct any problems with your Design Phase (only once) and then turn in both the corrected and uncorrected (initially graded) versions by the end of the course to receive a potential increase in your score on this phase.

Implementation Phase: Implement the database designed in the Design Phase, above, using an existing DBMS that you have access to. You may use Access, Oracle, DB2 or any other relational database package that you have access to. The product of this phase will be the web pages (screen shots) which demonstrate the various user views and the output of each variety of report or query. The details of the deliverables from the Implementation Phase are described on a link off of the 470 Course Home Page and there are examples of Implementation Phase deliverables from other student projects on other links off the 470 Course Home Page.  Dr. Stapleton may also have you demo your database functionality.

First Assignment: Read Chapters 1-3 of your text. Email Dr. Stapleton and let her know of your background with web page development a nd database programming and let her know if you would like to be a project team leader.