Class

Time Mon, Thu 11:45pm-1:25pm
Location CH 097 (Cargill Hall), except for THU Jan 23 which will on Zoom only

Course Team & Getting-in-Touch

Please communicate with us regularly. If you don’t understand something, please ask questions! We love questions. One of the benefits of attending a university and interactive classes as opposed to reading a book is that you get to interact with faculty, TAs, and your peers. We are continuously striving to become better and several questions of students who have attended this or similar classes in the past have helped me (Wolfgang) think about some of the illustrative examples you see in class. Please reach out to us with your questions via Piazza (linked to from within Canvas), so whoever of us is monitoring can answer your question first. Also, sometimes your peers can answer faster than we can (which is counts as great contribution), and your peers can join or just see and learn from the discussion. You can also leave anonymous feedback via this anonymous Google form, which only I (Wolfgang) can see. If you want to send me a private message, please send me an email and to not use Piazza nor Canvas nor Microsoft Teams.

Wolfgang Gatterbauer (Instructor)

E-mail w.gatterbauer@northeastern.edu
Web https://gatterbauer.name
Office Hours directly after class, or Fri 8:30am-10am @WVH450 in-person (1/17-4/11, except 1/24 & 2/21 & 3/7, always double-check calendar below), or via Microsoft Teams scheduled by email (in your email to me, please state topic and propose at least 3 different time slots that I can choose from)

Bruno Scarone (Head Teaching Assistant)

E-mail scarone.b@northeastern.edu
Web https://www-qa.khoury.northeastern.edu/people/bruno-scarone/
Office Hours Thu 2-4pm @WVH 462 in-person only (always double-check calendar below)

Diego Rivera Correa (Teaching Assistant)

E-mail rivera.di@northeastern.edu
Web https://drivera23.github.io/
Office Hours Wed 3-5pm (always double-check calendar below), online via Khoury OH tool

Jan Heinz (Teaching Assistant)

E-mail heinz.j@northeastern.edu
Office Hours Mon 3pm-5pm (always double-check calendar below), online via Khoury OH tool

Ethan Wong (Teaching Assistant)

E-mail wong.ethan2@northeastern.edu
Office Hours Tue 5pm-7pm (always double-check calendar below), online via Khoury OH tool

Acknowledgements

This course builds upon the structure and content of several prior database classes at University of Washington, Cornell, Stanford and Technion with various modifications to make the material suitable earlier in the curriculum (at most other colleges, databases are taught with an eye towards database internals and thus come at the end of the studies after strong algorithmic foundations are established). Some content courtesy to Ramakrishnan-Gehrke (authors of the "cow" database book), Dan Suciu (my former Postdoc advisor), Alon Levy, Magda Balazinska, Gerome Miklau, Yanlei Diao, Alexandra Meliou, Chris Re, Peter Bailis, Andy Pavlo, and Benny Kimelfeld. Also full credit to Nate Derbinsky for the slick course web page design.