Course Schedule - Fall 2026

For an at-a-glance month grid with all topics, exams, quizzes, and project milestones color coded, see the Visual Calendar.

Key Dates

A total of 39 class meetings for the semester.

Course Structure

The course is divided into seven content sections. Five sections close with a short in-class quiz; Sections 3 and 7 close with Exam 1 and the Final Exam instead. Each quiz asks questions about the section just completed, and the lowest quiz score is dropped. Two midterm exams and one final exam mark major checkpoints. There are no in-class review periods; a practice exam with worked solutions is published one week before each exam. Four individual projects plus a final capstone are spaced two to three weeks apart, each peer-graded with small-group presentations.

# Section Weeks Classes Closes
1 Foundations: Relational Model, Algebra, Design 1-4 9 Fri, Sep 11
2 SQL Mastery: Basic to Advanced 5-7 9 Fri, Oct 2
3 Programming and Tools: Python and DuckDB 8 2 Exam 1 (Oct 14)
4 Storage and Indexing 9-11 7 Fri, Oct 30
5 Query Processing and Optimization 12-13 6 Fri, Nov 13
6 Transactions, Concurrency, Recovery 14, 16 5 Wed, Dec 2
7 Distributed and Modern Systems 16 1 Final Exam

Exams

Exam Date Coverage Weight
Exam 1 Wed, Oct 14 Sections 1-3 (Foundations, SQL, Programming) 15%
Exam 2 Wed, Nov 18 Sections 4-5 (Storage, Indexing, Query Processing) 15%
Exam 3 (Final) Fri, Dec 11, 10:00 AM-12:00 PM Cumulative, weighted toward Sections 6-7 20%

Quizzes

Five short in-class quizzes discuss important concepts from the lectures. Each quiz asks questions about the section just completed. The lowest quiz score is dropped; the best four count toward the 15% quiz weight.

Quiz Date Covers
Quiz 1 Fri, Sep 11 §1 Foundations
Quiz 2 Fri, Oct 2 §2 SQL Mastery
Quiz 3 Fri, Oct 30 §4 Storage and Indexing
Quiz 4 Fri, Nov 13 §5 Query Processing
Quiz 5 Wed, Dec 2 §6 Transactions

See Assignments and Quizzes for details.

Projects

Projects mirror real industry tasks. Each student creates a private GitHub repo on their own account named cop5725fa26-project (adding cegme and rkc8626 as Admins), and selects a dataset family by the first letter of their last name, picking a slice within it. Projects build on the same dataset across the semester: Project 0 loads it; Project 1 normalizes and queries it; Project 2 runs advanced analytics; Project 3 tunes performance; the Final Project ships a complete artifact. Project weights increase progressively: Project 1 is smallest (4%), Project 3 the largest before the capstone (10%), and the Final Project the largest overall (15%). After each deadline, students present in small breakout groups; the highest-scored from each group presents to the full class.

Project Weight Released Due Presentations Industry analog
Project 0 P/F Fri, Aug 21 Fri, Sep 4 none (setup only) “Onboarding ticket”: tools + select your dataset
Project 1 4% Wed, Sep 2 Fri, Sep 25 Mon Sep 28 / Wed Sep 30 “Load this new source”: schema + ETL + business queries
Project 2 6% Mon, Sep 21 Fri, Oct 23 Mon Oct 26 / Wed Oct 28 “Write the metrics”: advanced SQL analytics
Project 3 10% Mon, Oct 19 Fri, Nov 13 Mon Nov 16 / Fri Nov 20 “This dashboard is slow”: indexing + tuning report
Final Project 15% Mon, Nov 16 Wed, Dec 9 Fri Dec 11 (final exam block) Ship a real artifact (report / API / dashboard / pipeline)

See Projects for deliverables; the full specification for each project is posted when it is released.

Featured Readings (SIGMOD / VLDB / CIDR)

Five paper discussions are spaced through the semester. Each comes with a short reading guide and a one-page written response (graded as part of the relevant quiz).

Week Paper
3 Codd, “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks,” CACM 1970
6 Hirn and Grust, “A Fix for the Fixation on Fixpoints,” CIDR 2023 (recursive CTEs)
10 Stonebraker et al., “C-Store: A Column-oriented DBMS,” VLDB 2005
13 Leis et al., “How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really?” PVLDB 2015
14 Mohan et al., “ARIES: A Transaction Recovery Method…” ACM TODS 1992
16 Raasveldt and Mühleisen, “DuckDB: An Embeddable Analytical Database,” SIGMOD 2019

A complete reading list, including supplementary papers tied to each lecture, is maintained in LECTURE_READINGS.

Weekly Schedule

Week 1: Welcome (Aug 17-21)

Day Date Topic Activity
Fri Aug 21 Course Introduction Syllabus, expectations, repo tour, software preview

Note: Week 1 contains no graded work. Project 0 is released Friday and is purely a setup pass/fail check due in Week 3.

Week 2: From History to the Relational Model (Aug 24-28)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Aug 24 History of Databases Codd 1970 (assigned), GMW Ch. 1
Wed Aug 26 Relational Model and Data Types GMW Ch. 2.1-2.3
Fri Aug 28 Relational Algebra I: Selection, Projection, Sets GMW Ch. 2.4

Discussion: PostgreSQL data type families (numeric, text, date/time, JSON, arrays, geometric, range) and how each fits the relational model.

Week 3: Design Theory I (Aug 31 - Sep 4)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Aug 31 Relational Algebra II: Joins, Division, Extended RA GMW Ch. 2.4-2.5
Wed Sep 2 Entity-Relationship Modeling GMW Ch. 4.1-4.5
Fri Sep 4 ER-to-Relations Translation GMW Ch. 4.5-4.6

Due: Project 0 (setup, P/F) by 11:59 PM Fri Sep 4 Assigned: Project 1 (released Wed Sep 2)

Week 4: Design Theory II (Sep 7-11)

Monday Sep 7 - Labor Day, no class

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Wed Sep 9 Functional Dependencies, Closure, Keys GMW Ch. 3.1-3.3
Fri Sep 11 Normalization (1NF, 2NF, 3NF, BCNF) GMW Ch. 3.4-3.7

Week 5: SQL Fundamentals (Sep 14-18)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Sep 14 SQL DDL and SELECT Basics GMW Ch. 6.1-6.2
Wed Sep 16 SQL Joins: Inner, Outer, Semi, Anti GMW Ch. 6.3
Fri Sep 18 Aggregation, GROUP BY, HAVING GMW Ch. 6.4

Week 6: Advanced SQL I (Sep 21-25)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Sep 21 Subqueries: Nested, Correlated, EXISTS, IN GMW Ch. 6.3.6, 10.2
Wed Sep 23 Common Table Expressions (WITH) PostgreSQL docs Ch. 7.8
Fri Sep 25 Window Functions I: OVER, PARTITION BY PostgreSQL docs Ch. 3.5

Due: Project 1 (Schema + SQL) by 11:59 PM Fri Sep 25 Assigned: Project 2 (released Mon Sep 21)

Week 7: Advanced SQL II (Sep 28 - Oct 2)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Sep 28 Window Functions II: Frames, Ranking, LAG/LEAD PostgreSQL docs Ch. 9.22
Wed Sep 30 Recursive Queries (WITH RECURSIVE) GMW Ch. 10.2; Hirn and Grust 2023
Fri Oct 2 Views, Constraints, Triggers GMW Ch. 7-8

Project 1 presentations: Mon Sep 28 (group breakouts), Wed Sep 30 (winners to class)

Week 8: Programming and Tools (Oct 5-9)

Friday Oct 9 - Homecoming, no class

Day Date Topic Reading
Mon Oct 5 Python + psycopg + pandas for SQL Results psycopg docs
Wed Oct 7 DuckDB + Notebooks + Visualization DuckDB docs

Week 9: Storage Introduction + Exam 1 (Oct 12-16)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Oct 12 Storage Hierarchy: Disks, SSDs, Pages, Records GMW Ch. 13.1-13.4
Wed Oct 14 Exam 1 (covers Weeks 1-8) —
Fri Oct 16 Buffer Management and Memory GMW Ch. 13.5-13.6

Week 10: Column Stores + B+ Trees (Oct 19-23)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Oct 19 Row Stores vs Column Stores GMW Ch. 13.7-13.8; Stonebraker C-Store
Wed Oct 21 B+ Trees I: Structure, Search, Bulk Loading GMW Ch. 14.1-14.2
Fri Oct 23 B+ Trees II: Insert, Delete, Cost Analysis GMW Ch. 14.2-14.3

Due: Project 2 (Advanced SQL) by 11:59 PM Fri Oct 23 Assigned: Project 3 (released Mon Oct 19)

Week 11: Indexing II + Sorting (Oct 26-30)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Oct 26 Hash Indexes: Static, Extendible, Linear GMW Ch. 14.4
Wed Oct 28 PostgreSQL Index Types: GiST, GIN, BRIN, Partial PostgreSQL docs Ch. 11
Fri Oct 30 External Sorting GMW Ch. 15.4

Project 2 presentations: Mon Oct 26 (group breakouts), Wed Oct 28 (winners)

Week 12: Join Algorithms and Execution (Nov 2-6)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Nov 2 Joins I: Nested Loop, Block NL, Index NL GMW Ch. 15.2-15.3
Wed Nov 4 Joins II: Sort-Merge, Hash, Grace Hash GMW Ch. 15.4-15.5
Fri Nov 6 Iterator (Volcano) Model and Pipelining GMW Ch. 15.1; Graefe 1994

Week 13: Optimization (Nov 9-13)

Wednesday Nov 11 - Veterans Day, no class

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Nov 9 Vectorized Execution; Optimization I (Equivalence) GMW Ch. 16.1-16.2; Boncz MonetDB/X100
Fri Nov 13 Optimization II: Cost Estimation, System R GMW Ch. 16.3-16.5; Leis 2015

Due: Project 3 (Indexing + Query Plans) by 11:59 PM Fri Nov 13 Assigned: Final Project (released Mon Nov 16)

Week 14: Transactions + Exam 2 (Nov 16-20)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Nov 16 Transactions and ACID; Serializability GMW Ch. 18.1-18.3
Wed Nov 18 Exam 2 (covers Weeks 9-13) —
Fri Nov 20 Two-Phase Locking; Deadlock Handling GMW Ch. 18.4-18.5

Project 3 presentations: Mon Nov 16 (group breakouts), Fri Nov 20 (winners)

Week 15: Thanksgiving Break (Nov 23-28)

No classes.

Week 16: Concurrency, Recovery, Modern (Nov 30 - Dec 2)

Day Date Topic Reading (GMW)
Mon Nov 30 MVCC, Snapshot Isolation, Timestamps GMW Ch. 18.7-18.9
Wed Dec 2 Recovery (WAL, ARIES) + Distributed + Modern GMW Ch. 17, 20-22; Mohan ARIES; DuckDB paper

Thursday Dec 3 - Friday Dec 4: Reading days, no class

Finals Week (Dec 5-11)

Notes on Rubrics and Grading

Each graded artifact has a public rubric and an automated grader.

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