COMM 437 DATABASE DESIGN AND ADMINISTRATION
CLASS MEETINGS
WHEN: 2:00 PM ‐3:00 PM Monday, Wednesday, Friday FROM January 4TH, 2011 TO April 7TH, 2011 WHERE: HA 405 & Online At www.vista.ubc.ca WHO: William Tan HA 654 [email protected] OFFICE HOURS: By Appointment TERM: 2010W Term II TEACHING ASSISTANT: Peter Cheung If you are reading this, you would have already read countless articles about the power of information in improving decision making, enhancing strategic position and sustaining competitive advantage. Now how about some statistics from BusinessWeek? (courtesy of SAP)The course will cover:
The principles of DB management
•Business Intelligence
DB applications in business
•Data Ware housing
(including web technology)
•Online Analytical Processing (OLAP)
Theoretical models
•Data Mining
RDBMS Design and Implementation
•Performance Management (Metrics
Structured Query Language (SQL)
and Scorecards)
Transaction Processing
•Security & privacy protection
Course Description
The hot button issue now is Business Intelligence (or the lack of it some may say). And we will deal with BI technologies like building data warehouses, data cubes, performancemetrics, and
data mining applications (analytics) in the last one third of the course.
But the foundation of any good Business Intelligence implementation is a solid database. “Solid” means a well‐designed, well‐populated, well‐maintained, and highly secure database (to the Cloud!).
And so this course, in the beginning, deals with the principles of data, database management, and their application in organizations. The material is approached from the point of view of the business user and the database administrator rather than the technical specialist who develops database software.
It covers the basic principles of the database approach and the theoretical models that underlie the field. Each student will design and implement a database application using the relational data model. The internal workings of database management systems will also be taught.
The second portion of the course is concerned with data retrieval languages and advanced concepts associated with using enterprise databases. Specific topics to be covered include transaction management, concurrency control, performance tuning, and database administration. The third, as mentioned already will cover Business Intelligence applications.
Pedagogy
‐ Understand the origin, nature, and evolution of Database Management Systems in business through classroom lectures and software walkthroughs. ‐ Hear first hand from industry guest speakers talk about current issues and challenges from a technical, managerial, and strategic perspective (currently 2 speakers identified). ‐ Understand the tension between what is technically feasible or desirable with what is strategically necessary through classroom open discussions with case studies. ‐ Practice what you have learned through hands‐on project work so you can “walk the walk and talk the talk”.Lab Fee
There is a $ 20.00 lab fee for all COMM 437 students (taxes included). This fee is necessary in order to cover the cost of copyright materials used in the course including software licenses. The fee can be paid at the Duplication Center (HA 035) or online at http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/theStore before January 31st 2011. With payment of this fee students will gain access to web hosted BI software as well as student copies of Microsoft software to install on their PCs. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office is not included although Microsoft Access 2010 IS INCLUDED. Also, the course grade cannot be released until the lab fee is paid.
Student Evaluation
Evaluation will be based on FOUR components: (1) Quizzes (10%) (2) Assignments (20%) a. Entity‐Relationship (5%) b. Relational Database Design (5%) c. Structured Query Language – Oracle (5%) d. Business Intelligence Project (5%) (3) Mid‐Term Exam (20%) (4) Final Exam (covers whole term) (50%) Students must pass the final exam in order to pass the course.Course Textbook and References
The following textbook is required and the link is available on Blackboard (WebCT) Vista. http://www.mypearsonstore.ca/bookstore/product.asp?isbn=0321523067&xid=PSEDThe course web site is at http://www.vista.ubc.ca/. It will contain a link to all the lecture notes, assignments, exam papers and the suggested solutions relevant to this course. The entire set of ORACLE documentation is also available online at http://oracle.sauder.ubc.ca:5560/isqlplus
The text, additional readings, and class handouts should be sufficient for taking the course provided you attend all the lectures and understand the material covered in all of the lectures.
You are strongly advised to read the recommended chapters in the text BEFORE each class (and the quizzes give you credit for doing this).
Here are some references that I used for my lessons. You need NOT buy these books.
Decision Support and Business Intelligence Systems, 8th Edition by Efraim Turban, Jay E. Aronson, Ying‐
Peng Liang, and Ramesh Sharda. Pearson Prentice Hall, Inc. 2007.
Performance Dashboards; Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business by Wayne W. Eckerson.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2006.
The Microsoft Data Warehouse Toolkit by Joy Mundy and Warren Thornthwaite. Wiley Publishing, Inc.
2006.
Course Prerequisites
It is assumed that the student is familiar with basic MIS principles to the level of COMM 335. Prior hands‐on experience with programming constructs (e.g. looping and if‐then‐else) will be an asset. Otherwise, please
Assignments and Exams
There will be four (4) assignments and one of which will require “coding” (coding is not the same as programming). The software for the third assignment (Oracle) is installed on a database server and IDs will be issued for you to access the server and do your assignments. You will be able to do the assignments from the PC lab, or from any Internet connected computer using Microsoft Internet Explorer (no other browsers please). For the fourth (last) assignment, software (Cognos BI 8.0 and Tableau) will be available for access on the Internet and also in the PC lab.
Policy 1
No late assignments will be accepted. The exceptions are doctor’s note, prior approval by the instructor for special circumstances (e.g. representing UBC on a one week sports competition), and the Oracle server is down for half a day or more. In the case where the Oracle server is down, the extension will be the number of days the Oracle server is unavailable. For example, if the Oracle server is down for a day and a half, then the assignment will be due two days after the official due date.Policy 2
All assignments must be done individually. Students are encouraged to discuss the assignment with each other. However, they should NOT look at each other’s written work and they SHOULD implement or write up the assignments separately. If the assignments are judged by the marker to be identical, a grade of zero will be awarded to every student involved. Please also become very familiar with the University’s Policy #69.
Policy 3
The mid‐term and final exam will be closed book. No communication capable devices or camera phones are allowed. However the Instructor will review this with the class closer to the mid‐term and final exam.Policy 4
No office hours on the day an assignment is due or before the mid‐term and final‐exam. The reason is simply to discourage last minute work where anxiety takes over and not much learning is accomplished. This does not include “tying up loose ends” where a question was raised several days earlier with no clear resolution.
Course Schedule (subject to change)
Topic Text Assignment &
Quizzes
Jan 03 Stat Holiday – No Class Meeting
Jan 05 Away for Case Competition – No Class Meeting Quiz 0 on Vista Jan 07 Away for Case Competition – No Class Meeting Quiz 0 no credit Jan 10 Course Information plus Cuyahoga Community College Case (on Vista), other web site visits (you pick) Jan 12 Review of Concepts covered in COMM335 – Done through case discussion Dreamhome Case Study. Ch. 11. p298‐ p319 Jan 14 The Database Environment Ch. 2 Jan 17 Entity‐Relationship Modeling ‐ Design, Design, Design Ch. 12 Jan 19 ‐‐‐“‐‐‐ Quiz 1
Jan 21 Conceptual Database Design Ch. 16 Assigmnt 1 Out
Jan 24 Enhanced ER Modeling – www.ER2010.sauder.ubc.ca Ch. 13 Jan 26 Normalization (3rd NF and BCNF) Ch. 14 & 15.3 Quiz 2
Jan 28 The Relational Model Ch. 4
Jan 31 Relational Algebra and Relational Calculus Ch. 5 Assigmnt 1 Due
Feb 02 Logical Database Design Ch. 17
Feb 04 Buffer – Class (in case all the above is just too much!)
Feb 07 SQL – Data Manipulation Ch. 6
Feb 09 ‐‐‐“‐‐‐ Ch. 6 Quiz 3
Feb 11 SQL – Data Definition Ch. 7 Assigmnt 2 Out
Mid‐Term Break
When? Transaction Management Ch. 22 Make‐Up Class
(2hrs) Web Technology and DBMSs Ch. 30 Make‐Up Class
Feb 21 Semi‐Structured Data and XML Ch. 31
Feb 23 Query Processing Ch. 23 Assigmnt 2 Due
Feb 25 Query Processing Ch.23 Assigmnt 3 Out
Feb 28 Professional, Legal, and Ethical Issues /Security Ch. 20/21
Mar 02 Objected Oriented Databases Ch. 27
Mar 04 Distributed Databases ‐ Concepts Quiz 4
Mar 07 Distributed Databases – Design (Case Study) Ch. 24 Mar 09 Replication and Mobile Databases (iPhones & GPSs) Ch. 26
Course Schedule (subject to change)
Topic Text Assignment & Quizzes
Mar 14 Introduction to Business Intelligence Ch. 32 Mar 16 ‐‐‐“‐‐‐ Mar 18 Case study – SYSCO; Overstock.com Mar 21 Data Warehousing Concepts‐ Case Study Suzuki Recreational Vehicles Ch. 32 Assigmnt 4 Out Mar 23 Data Warehousing Concepts Ch. 32 Mar 25 Dashboards ‐ Tableau Mar 28 Performance Monitoring ‐ Metrics
Mar 30 OLAP – Cubes Ch. 34 Quiz 5
Apr 01 Data‐Mining (Analytics) Ch. 35
Apr 04 Data‐Mining (Analytics) Assigmnt 4 Due
Apr 06 Final Exam Review
