| Day Section | Evening Section | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Instructor: | Ramona Truta |
|
|
| Office: | BA 3219 |
BA 3219 |
|
| Office Hours: | Monday, 6:15-8:15 pm, or by appointment |
Monday, 6:15-8:15pm, or by appointment |
|
| Email: | 343instructor AT gmail DOT com |
343instructor AT gmail DOT com | |
| Phone: | 416-978-6182 |
416-978-6182 |
|
| Lectures: | Monday, 4 - 6 p.m., SF 1105 |
Tuesday, 6 - 8 p.m., BA 1190 |
|
| Tutorials: | Wednesday, 4 - 5 p.m., SF 1105 |
Tuesday, 8 - 9 p.m., BA 1190 |
|
| Course Website: | |||
Information from us: The course website (http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~csc343h/winter) is required reading. It contains assignment handouts and other essential material. The course discussion board is where we will post assignment tips and clarifications and other important information. You are responsible for reading all postings made by the course instructors.
Questions from you: You should use the course discussion board, rather than email, to ask questions about assignments and course lecture material. This way, everyone can benefit from the question and the answer. For personal questions, email your instructor using your UofT or cdf address. Email from a hotmail account may not reach us. Please include "343" in the subject line (or your message may accidentally be filed as spam) and sign your full name. We receive a large quantity of email and posts, and we will try to respond by the end of the next business day. However, it may take longer, especially near due dates. Please try to start assignments early so that you can ask your questions well ahead of the due date. Tip: Messages that are short, specific and address a single topic are most likely to receive a prompt reply. And remember that if you do not hear back quickly, we are always available during office hours to help.
Office Hours: You are welcome to attend either of our office hours, regardless of your section. Office hours are a very effective way to get help with course material. They are also a great way to get to know us better, and you should be getting to know your professors. Among other reasons, many of you will need references for work or graduate school, and only professors who know you well can provide helpful references. So please come see us!
The required textbook is Database Systems Concepts, by A. Silberschatz, H. F. Korth, and S. Sudarshan, McGraw Hill, 2006 (5th Edition). We have arranged a custom-published version of the textbook, containing only the most relevant chapters. It is far less expensive than the full book, and we do expect you to purchase and read it. The text serves as a good companion to the lecture notes, which do not cover every topic in complete detail. If you plan to continue and take csc443, you may prefer to buy the full book. There should be used copies available.
Some professors use Database Management Systems, by R. Ramakrishnan, and J. Gehrke, McGraw Hill, 2003 (3rd Edition). If you have access to this book already, you are welcome to use it; We will provide a list of suitable readings from it as well.
The Faculty of Arts and Science prerequisites do not apply to engineering students. Their program prepares them adequately for this course.
You have the option of partnering with one other (currently enrolled) csc343 student for your assignments. You may choose your own partner, and it need not be the same person for each assignment. If you do have a partner for an assignment, submit only a single copy of your work, with both your names and signatures on the cover sheet. Jointly submitted assignments will be graded in the usual way and both partners will receive the same mark.
Working with a partner has the potential to lighten your
workload or to increase it, depending on how well you
work together. Be aware that if you do elect to divide up the
work with someone else you are still responsible for learning the
course material underlying the assignments. In spite of this
potential pitfall, we encourage you to pair up for assignments.
As a future developer you need to learn how to work as a part of a
team, a task that involves many skills beyond the purely technical
aspect of creating working code.
| Mark Component | Due week | Due date | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quiz 1 | week 3 | Tue 20 Jan / Wed 21 Jan, in tutorial | 1% |
| Assignment 1 | week 4 | Fri 30 Jan, 11:59 p.m. | 10% |
| Midterm | week 6 | Tue 10 Feb / Wed 11 Feb, in tutorial | 15% |
| Assignment 2 | week 7 | Fri 27 Feb, 11:59 p.m. | 10% |
| Quiz 2 | week 8 | Tue 03 Mar / Wed 04 Mar, in tutorial | 2% |
| Assignment 3 | week 10 | Fri 20 Mar, 11:59 p.m. | 10% |
| Quiz 3 | week 11 | Tue 24 Mar / wed 25 Mar, in tutorial | 2% |
| Assignment 4 | week 12 | Fri 03 Apr, 11:59 p.m. | 10% |
| Final exam | during the examp period | see http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/undergraduate/exams | 40% |
In order to pass this course, you must earn
at least 40% on the final exam.
You must make sure that all your assignments work on the cdf machines. Code that fails on cdf, even if it works in another environment, will be marked as not working
All assignments will be due on Friday at 11:59 p.m.
Assignments must be typed. Handwritten assignments
will not be marked.
For every assignment, you must submit
an electronic copy
in one of the following formats: plain ASCII file,
Postscript, or PDF.
You will use the
"submit"
command on cdf for making your electronic submission, and
each assignment handout will include
instructions for doing so. Once you have
submitted, use the
"listsub"
command on cdf to check that you
have submitted all the required files; missing files will not be accepted
after the due date.
Questions concerning the grading of assignments and the tests must be submitted in writing to the instructor or a course TA within one week of when it was first returned to the class. You must use the Remark Request Form, and staple it to the front of the marked assignment or test. Note that the entire assignment or test may be re-assessed.
To help you balance your workload, every student is granted 3 "grace day" points for use during the term. You and your partner can have a grace day using one point each, which allows you to submit up to 24 hours late without penalty. Similarly, you can have two grace days with two points each, or three with three points each. Your pair will only get credit for late work if both partners have enough grace day points left. Note that you may not transfer unused grace days to another student.
If you decide to use grace days, you must indicate this on the cover page of your assignment. Weekends and holidays count when calculating grace days.
If you have exhausted your grace days, late work can only be accepted if there is a documented medical reason or other emergency. Please contact your instructor as soon as possible if you are experiencing such an emergency so that we can make appropriate arrangements. You must use the approved UofT medical certificate for notes from a doctor.
The work you submit must be your own. It is an academic offence to copy someone else's work. This includes their code and their words, and even their ideas. Whether you copy or let someone else copy, it is an offence. Academic offences are taken very seriously.
At the same time, we want you to benefit from working with other students. This is one reason why you may work in pairs for the assignments. Obviously, work done with your partner is a joint effort. You are also welcome to work appropriately with students other than your partner. We encourage you to discuss course material and technology related to assignments. For example, you may work through examples that help you understand course material or a new technology, or help each other configure your system to run a supporting piece of software. You may also discuss assignment requirements. However, other than between partners, collaboration on assignment solutions is strictly forbidden. The most certain way to protect yourself is not to discuss assignment solutions with students other than your partner. Certainly you must not let others see your assignment solutions, even in draft form. See http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fpitt/documents/plagiarism.html for more advice about avoiding academic offences.
Each assignment will come with a cover page that will require you to name all students with whom you have discussed the assignment and all texts or other resources you have consulted, and to sign a statement saying that you have read and understood the course policy on academic offences. Without these, your assignment will not be marked.
Please don't cheat. We want you to succeed and are here to help if you are having difficulty.