Course Outline

The Database Environment

• Discuss the environment in which the databases function
• Explain why databases continue to grow in number and importance
• Explain at least 10 advantages of the database approach as compared to traditional file processing
• Identify several costs and risks of the database approach
• Describe the life cycle of the systems development project including an emphasis on database analysis, design, and implementation activities
• Discuss the rules of the individuals who design, implement, use, and administer databases

Data Modeling

• Explain how to write good names and definitions for entities, relationships, and attributes
• Distinguish unary, binary, and ternary relationships and give a common example of each
• Draw an E-R diagram to represent common business situations
• Convert many to many relationships to associative entity types
• Recognize when to use subtype forward/super type relationships in data modeling
• Discuss the various categories of business rules
• Use both specialization and a generalization as techniques for designing super type forward/subtype relationships

Objected-Oriented Data Modeling

• Describe the activities in the different faces of the object oriented development lifecycle
• Compare and contrast the object oriented model with the E-R and EER models
• Explain the properties of relations
• Discuss the first normal form, second normal form, and third normal form
• Use normalization to decompose our relation with anomalies into well structured relations

Physical Database Design and Performance

• Describe the physical database design process, its objectives, and deliverables
• Explain how to select an appropriate file organization by balancing various important design factors
• Describe three important types of file organization

Distributed Databases

• Explain the business conditions that are drivers for the use of distributed databases in organizations
• Explain the potential advantages and risks associated with distributed databases
• Explain the four strategies for the design of distributed databases, options within each strategy, and the factors to consider in selection among these strategies
• Explain the salient features of several distributed database management systems

Relational Databases

• Discuss the basic concepts of relational databases
• List follow the basic relational operations
• Explain relational keys and structures

Database Administration

• Discuss the several major functions of data administration and database administration
• Describe the role of data dictionaries and information repository as and how they are used by data administrators
• Describe the problem of database security and at least five techniques used to enhance that security

Data Warehouse Architectures

• Explain the basic concepts of data warehouse
• List reasons most organizations today need data warehousing. Be able to describe the three levels in a data warehouse architecture
• Describe the basic environment that must be set up to enable Internet and intranet database enabled connectivity
• Describe web services and the issues associated with successful deployment in light traffic commerce
• Discuss web security and privacy issues