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Description
This course will cover fundamental concepts and issues of distributed database systems. The course will not cover the use of a distributed database management system. Students are expected to have an undergraduate-level familiarity with concepts of database systems and networking. The course will focus on the following topics:
- Distributed transaction processing and concurrency control
- Distributed reliability and security
- Distributed query processing
- Parallel database systems
- Advanced Topics
For the first three topics, we will begin by understanding the problem and investigating the solution in a centralized setting. The next step
will be to extend to a distributed environment and address the problems of distribution. The focus of the course will be on the concepts
(the algorithms and protocols) used in distributed databases. Advanced topics will cover current issues in distributed database systems
including P2P databases, web databases, sensor and stream databases.
The theoretical work will be augmented with project work allowing students to
implement some of the distributed algorithms or protocols. Projects will be conducted using the JAVA programming language.
Textbook
Recommended: Principles of Distributed
Database Systems, (Second Edition), by Tamer Ozsu and Patrick
Valduriez
Prentice Hall ISBN 0-13-659707-6 (1999). Additional
material for the book is available here.
Supplemental: Concurrency Control and
Recovery in Database Systems, by P.A. Bernstein, V. Hadzilacos and N. Goodman
Addison Wesley. This book is currently out of print, but has been made
freely available. It can be accessed here(in
pdf).
Reading Material
Grading Policy
The final grade will be (approximately) based upon the following:
| Written Assignments | 20% |
| Programming Assignments | 30% |
| Midterm Exam | 20% |
| Final | 30% |
Course Policy
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Late submission will result in a 10% penalty for each day late.
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Students are strongly advised that any act of cheating will result in a
score of 0 for the entire assignment and repeat offences will be reported
to the Office of the Dean of Students and will result in an automatic F
grade. You are encouraged to discuss problems and ideas but the final solution
must be your own. We will be using copy detection software, MOSS.