CPS 216: Advanced Database Systems
(Spring 2005)

Index

• Course Description
• Time and Place
• Books
• Staff
• Web, Newsgroup, and Blackboard
• Accounts
• Grading
• Honor Code

Instructor: Jun Yang
Web: http://www.cs.duke.edu/~junyang/
Email: junyang@cs.duke.edu
Office: D327 LSRC
Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays after class, or by appointment

Most of the course materials, including the syllabus, lecture notes, reading assignments, homeworks, programming FAQs, etc., will be available through the course Web page (http://www.cs.duke.edu/courses/spring05/cps216/).

The newsgroup duke.cs.cps216 (available on news server news.cs.duke.edu) is useful for posting questions that are likely to be of interest to the rest of the class. We very much encourage students in the class to post responses to questions. We will monitor the the newsgroup regularly, and post responses to questions that have not previously been asked or answered. Before posting a question, please do make sure that you have read all previous messages and that your question has not yet been discussed.

We will use the Blackboard course management system (https://courses.duke.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab=courses&url=/bin/common/course.pl?course_id=_26053_&frame=top) for grades.

Finally, please check your emails regularly, as important course announcements will be sent via email.

There are weekly reading assignments, to be posted in the Assignments section of the course Web site as the course progresses. Some of the reading assignments require you to write short reviews.

There are four homeworks, with a mix of written problems, and programming problems. Late homeworks will not be accepted, unless there are documented excuses from a physician or dean.

There is a course project (done either individually or in groups of at most three). Details will be available in the third week of the class.

Both midterm and final exams are open-book and open-notes.

Under the Duke Honor Code, you are expected to submit your own work in this course, including homeworks, projects, and exams. On many occasions when working on homeworks and projects, it is useful to ask others (the instructor, the TA, or other students) for hints or debugging help, or to talk generally about the written problems or programming strategies. Such activity is both acceptable and encouraged, but you must indicate in your submission any assistance you received. Any assistance received that is not given proper citation will be considered a violation of the Honor Code. In any event, you are responsible for understanding and being able to explain on your own all written and programming solutions that you submit. The course staff will pursue aggressively all suspected cases of Honor Code violations, and they will be handled through official University channels.