Announcements

Announcements that are specific to one campus only (UTSC or St. George) or one section only (Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday) only will be identified as such.

Please check this page regularly (meaning at least twice a week, more if possible)!

Apr 21, 2008 UTSC: Office Hours

Due to unforseen events, office hours will be shifted from one o'clock to four o'clock today. They will go to 7 p.m., but can be extended to bit later if necessary. ... faye

Apr 20, 2008 UTSC: Final exam

The exam will cover material from both the first and the second term. With regard to query optimization: you are only responsible for those slides that were covered in class. The format will NOT be similar to that of the midterm. and ... You will not have marks deducted in true/false questions. ... faye

Apr 17, 2008 UTSC Important Announcements

• A3 remarks are completed: The script has been fixed to correctly use dates and Assignment 3 has been remarked. The mark for many of you improved significantly. The results have been mailed to the UTSC account to which the assignment was posted. So, please be sure to share these results with your partner, if you have one.
  If you wish to improve your mark - you may make minor (non-logical) code changes, and I will rerun it during office hours (see next item). A 20% penalty will apply for this consideration. If your only problem was a connection problem - then if you fix it and I rerun it (in office hours), then no penalty will be applied if that is the only problem addressed.
• Office Hours: On Monday, April 21 from 1 - 5 p.m. (or as long as needed), I will be in my office in Science Wing room SW625B. At this time you can retrieve your assignments, and, if necessary, run your A3 remark.
• A4 marks have been posted. Most of you did very well. Good Work!!
  
  ... faye

Apr 14, 2008 Final office hour St. George

Apr 15th noon-1pm in BA 7270 to pick up graded E2 or any other graded term material. Final regrading deadline for E2 Saturday Apr 19th. Regrading deadlines for all assignments and E1 are past.

Apr 6, 2008 Remarking Scripts for A3

Remarking has been completed for all students on the St. George campus. I should have sent you (or your partner, depending on which CDF userid it was submitted under,) a revised version of the output. Some of the programs either did not compile or did not connect - causing all of the methods to fail. I suspect that for many, this can be corrected with a few simple code adjustments. Shengdong and Meghana will be available for remark requests tomorrow (Monday) from 6 to 8 p.m. in Bahen room BA 2210 (a CDF lab). If you can demonstrate that your code runs with teensy changes (no logic changes), you can get credit for the results, minus a 20% code adjustment penalty. For those of you who got 3 or 4 and probably should have gotten perfect - this is is a good opportunity.

Here is the set of Bash shell scripts and the rest of the stuff that you will need to try the tests yourself - in order to figure out what went wrong with your code. To get into bash ... just enter bash in your terminal. You can modify your .bashrc script to export the CLASSPATH - then run it when you start up bash.

UTSC students - I have not gotten your programs retested yet. I will do so in the next few days. It was particularly important for the downtown students to get their marks before their remark session tomorrow. I am more flexible with you since you will be emailing your changes to me.

Best of luck to you in your finals ... faye

Apr 6, 2008 St. George: Monday Warehouse lecture clarification - materialized views

I would like to correct something that I said in class on Monday regarding materialized views. Materialized views are the actual permanent physical joining of tables that would otherwise be kept separate in a transaction-based database to avoid anomalies such as those that could be caused by updates, inserts and deletes. Since the warehouse environment is primarily a static, read-only environment used for finding information - we want to eliminate the constant rejoining of records that are usually logically related and thus reduce the processing required to execute our warehouse inquiry. Where we can judiciously identify (based on our anticipated understanding of the user's requirements) tables that will be consistently joined, we can pre-emptively join them in a permanant table. We call this a materialized view.

To give you a (bad) analogy: If I am working in a really busy diner, and I know my customers will all want jam on their bread, I will pre-prepare for them by putting jam on all my bread before they ask for it. (I did say it was a bad analogy) This eliminates the time I would need to put the jam on the bread when I am busy serving a crowd. We materialize views in anticipation of our users' needs - to reduce the time to prepare when they actually make demands on our system. As I mentioned in class - Warehouse queries can be long and complex - this can help to reduce the load.

... faye

Apr 3, 2008  St. George New Office Hours for picking up A4 before final and A4 grading questions. See Exam 2 and End of Term information

Apr 3, 2008 Assignment 3 will be reassessed !!! and Remarking request session on Monday

We have detected a few problems with the automarker code that was used to mark your assignments. In particular - the date format used to call the methods was incorrect. Since about half the methods involved a date in the signature, a lot of people may have lost half the marks which they had rightfully earned.

So ... please do not get discouraged if you worked hard on your assignment and received a poor mark. We will be revising our scripts, and hopefully running them again this weekend. We will mail your results file to your cdf account (based on the account to which you submitted). You should be able to pick them up from you mail on cdf by midnight (hopefully) on Sunday. As well - the marks will be reposted. UTSC students: I will mail your output to the utsc account to which you submitted the assignment.

We will post the revised scripts once they have been revised. This will allow you to better understand how it was marked.

St George students: If you feel that there was a problem - then you may ask for a remark request on Monday - from 6 - 8 p.m. in room BA2210. If your request is a frivolous one - then the remarking penalties discussed on the assignment page will apply. Shengdong and Meghana will be there to review your requests. If you feel that there was just a stupid mistake - a word or two of your code - (not logical stuff) that could be changed to significantly improve your marks - you can take a 20% penalty - come to the Monday session - and ask Shen to rerun the code. More on this will be posted this weekend.

UTSC students: you may have the same consideration as the St. George students - however, you must email your requests directly to faye@cs.toronto.edu

My apologies to anyone who was adversely affected by this ... faye

Apr 1, 2008 St. George: Tuesday tutorial cancelled - the TA was unexpectedly unavailable.

Students from all sections, as usual, may attend Wed tutorial. Apologies for the inconvenience.

Mar 31, 2008 St. George: Exam 2 and End of Term information

A few sample problems for practice are here. Sample solutions.
These are for practice only and do not cover all topics. For other topics, we suggest doing the following problems from the book: 2.5, 2.7, 3.13, 3.15, 3.17, 12.1 and 12.3. As a reminder, solutions for all of these can be found on the book's web site.

March 24, 2008   St. George Students: Assignment submission & Office hours

• Where to submit the hard-copy of your assignment: There is a drop box which is labeled for CSC343 in Bahen room BA2210. In addition to your electronic submission - you must submit a paper copy there.
• Office Hours: This week, Professor Miller is away and I (Faye Baron) will be available to you for office hours. I can be found at Bahen room BA4261 between 5 and 6 p.m. on Tuesday. I may be around at other hours during the day - but cannot guarantee it - you are welcome to come by if you need help.

March 22, 2008   UTSC ONLY!: Assignment Extension

The submission date for the last assignment (assignment 4) for the UTSC campus section has been extended to the last lecture on April 2nd. Assignments submitted after this date will not be accepted.

March 10, 2008   UTSC: Tutorial cancelled this week at Scarborough Campus

There will not be a tutorial this wednesday at UTSC. Class will continue as scheduled at 7:00 p.m.

March 3, 2008   UTSC: Tutorial room for this Wednesday

For the remainder of the term, room HW408 has been booked for tutorials on Wednesdays from 6 - 7 p.m. Please go to that room at 6 - not the regular classroom. The class at 7 will continue to be held in room HW214

March 1, 2008  A few more Assignment 3 changes and clarifications

There are a few more changes to Assignment 3, and the UTSC submission date is changed. Be sure to consult the FAQ page for these updates.

Feb 21, 2008  A few Assignment 3 changes

There are a few changes to Assignment 3. Be sure to consult the FAQ page for these updates.

Feb 12, 2008 UTSC: IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING A2 Submission

Many of you submitted a pdf file for your assignment 2. This is NOT acceptable for this assignment since the automarking scripts cannot read PDF files. (nor will it be acceptable for the next assignment) You are responsible for reading announcements as well as the FAQ files to get any updates and instructions. Specifically the A2FAQ page indicates that you are to submit text files for this assignment and the exact format that they are to be submitted in. Please look at those instructions - if you did NOT submit your assignment correctly on starveling, you have until next Wednesday to do so - otherwise, you wil probably lose several marks. NOTE: You may NOT change your queries from the paper copy which you submitted.

Feb 13, 2008 St. George: Midterm information

Feb 12, 2008 St. George: Some sample midterm problems

A few sample problems for practice are here, and solutions. These are for practice only and do not cover all topics.

Sample A1 queries

Feb 12, 2008 UTSC Tutorial Cancelled this week

Since some of you are writing midterms - there will not be a tutorial between 6 and 7 p.m. this week. Tutorial is cancelled, but class will continue as scheduled at 7:10 p.m. on Wednesday.

Feb 11, 2008 UTSC (Scarborough Campus only) Important Announcements

A web page has been added which provides information about the midterm at UTSC as well as how to submit your assignments electronically. You may access it via the UTSC Info menu item on the left (of this page), or click here.

Feb 1, 2008 Change in topic presentation for UTSC (Scarborough Campus)

I will be starting Entity-relationship models in class this week. This means that the topic, embedded SQL and JDBC will be presented in class the following week by Manos when I am away. Because I am away - it does not diminish the importance of the lecture. Embedded SQL is testable material for your midterm and your next assignment will be on JDBC. Please be sure to print the notes for Entity-relationship models and bring them to class this week.
Thanks ... faye

Jan 29, 2008 Submission instructions for UTSC

As yet, I have been unable to arrange electronic submission for the course. For this reason - you must deliver a paper copy to me at the beginning of class. If you are late on the assignment - you must email your assignment (Postscript or PDF file only) to me so that I can ask the marking TAs to print and mark it.
Thanks ... faye

Jan 29, 2008 Submission instructions for St. George Campus

You must use the cdf submit command to submit electronically. See http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/students/submit.html The file name should be A1.pdf or A1.ps.

Jan 23, 2008

As announced many times, assignments can be done in teams of one or two people.

Jan 20, 2008 Relational Algebra Symbols and A1 Clarifications

A1 clarifications have been posted on the clarification page. If you are using Microsoft Word to edit your first assignment, you may want to download this Word document which contains some of the relational algebra symbols you will require.

Jan 14, 2008  Downtown Campus: Prerequisites

GPA requirements cannot be waived. We cannot provide course waivers for non-CS students. For CS students, we will approve taking 263 as a co-req, but you must provide documentation of your enrollment in 263 this term.

Jan 14, 2008  Scarborough UTSC Campus: Class will start 1 hour earlier on Wednesday

Thanks to the efforts of our administration, for the next few weeks, class will start at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays.
As well, while we are able to start an hour earlier (until midterms start), tutorials will be given immediately after or before the lecture.
And .. on these weeks, when we can hold tutorials on Wednesdays, the tutorial on Thursdays will be canceled.

Jan 8, 2008  St. George Campus: You have been added to the course bulletin board

You have been added to the course bulletin board and can now see all contents and post there.
To sign in you must use your CDF username as your loginid and the last four digits of your student number as your password. UTSC students will be added very soon.

Jan 7, 2008  St. George Campus: Tuesday evening students Important Schedule Change!

The First lecture will be at 7:00 p.m.
After this, all lectures will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. and the tutorial will be from 8 - 9.

Jan 7, 2008  St. George Campus: Your CDF Account

When you register for this course you are given an account on the CDF computer network. You will use this account to electronically submit assignments.

Look up your CDF username: http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/webfinger