COMP3311 Notices

Notices

  • Checking your Marks

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 17 December 2020, 10:30:07 PM.

    If you ask me to check your marks, I don't have time to do it before the break.

    I'll do all this when I return on Jan 4.

    P.S. In all email with me (or the class account), include your zID

  • WD Grades

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 17 December 2020, 09:55:39 PM.

    If you received a grade of WD for the course, it means that we detected "over-similarity" between your submission for some assessment item and some other student's submission for the same item.

    If it is proved/admitted that there was some collusion/plagiarism on an assignment, the penalty is zero for the assignment, and an entry in the UNSW plagiarism register (which is removed if you complete the rest of your degree without any more incidents).

    If it is suspected that there was some collusion/plagiarism on the exam, your case will be referred to the Student Conduct and Integrity Unit for further investigation. Penalties for exam misconduct can be severe.

  • LE Grades

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 17 December 2020, 04:59:55 PM, last modified Thursday 17 December 2020, 09:50:13 PM.

    Arrrghhh! Somebody (not me) forgot to press the [Approve] button and so all your marks are sitting in Astra waiting to be transferred to MyUNSW.

    I'll chase this up now, but I don't know when the actual marks will appear.

    Update: Somebody pushed the Approve button, so your marks are now in MyUNSW.

  • Ass1 and Ass2 Marks

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 08 December 2020, 10:25:41 AM.

    I've fixed the marking for default values in Ass1. Most people will see a small increment to their mark. Nobody's mark will be reduced.

    NOTE: I did not change the marking journals, so they still have the old mark if you "collect" them. The mark is changed in SMS and the new mark should show in "sturec". Since SMS is used to compute your final mark, that's where it matters.

    As far as I'm concerned, that clears up Ass1 marking issues. If you have other gripes, send me email.

    Dylan will be re-running the auto-marking for Ass2 later today. Hopefully, that will fix the gripes about the marking for that assignment. Check tomorrow and email me if not.

    Dylan *will* be changing the marking journals, as well as updating marks in SMS.

  • Time's Up

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 10:05:45 PM.

    COMP3311 is over ... well, apart from all the marking we have to do ... and the Supps in January ... and ...

    Any submissions after 10pm AEDT are flagged as LATE and will be ignored

    Maybe I will give you 10 minutes grace ... I see that Webcms3 has ground to a halt, presumably because you didn't listen to me and left all of your submissions up to the last minute ...

    All the smart people who submitted/finished early will now be sitting back and relaxing.

    Once you're done with the exam, there's a new poll where I'd like to find out how much time of the 12 hours you actually spent working on the exam.

    And for me ... it's time for a craft beer!

  • One hour to go ...

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 09:01:31 PM.

    It's 9pm AEDT .. the exam closes at 10pm AEDT

  • Non-executable q6 and q7 scripts

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 03:16:12 PM.

    It seems that on some systems, unzip is changing the mode of the q6 and q7 scripts.

    Try chmod 755 q6 to make it executable (same for q7)

    It's also possible that your Python interpreter is not in /usr/bin . If which python3 shows a different name, replace /usr/bin/python3 by whatever path name which python3 gives you.

  • And Go!

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 10:00:30 AM, last modified Thursday 03 December 2020, 09:00:41 PM.

    The exam is now open. Closing at 10pm AEDT.

    Your first stop is the Exam Instructions page. Read this carefully.

  • Get set ...

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 09:55:58 AM.

    If there are any updates to the exam (hopefully not), they'll be posted on the Exam Updates page.

    Keep this page open and refresh every so often. Check here before sending email.

  • On your marks ...

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 03 December 2020, 09:53:36 AM.

    I'll open the exam questions soon ...

    Please DO NOT use the Webcms3 forum during the exam. Send email to cs3311@cse if you have questions.

    In fact, try to avoid Webcms3 as much as possible. You can access most content via this page

  • Assignment 3 marks now avaible

    Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Wednesday 02 December 2020, 08:03:36 PM.

    Assignment 3 marks are now available.

    Assignment 3 has not been hand marked so there are no style comments.

    You can find them here on WebCMS or with 

    $ 3311 classrun -check ass3
$ 3311 classrun -sturec

    On CSE servers.

  • Exam Preparations

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 02 December 2020, 01:31:22 PM.

    The most important preparation step (apart from revising the content): make sure that you have a working PostgreSQL/Python environment available.

    If working at home, check that you can start/stop the server ok (and your environment is set up properly).

    If working at home or on the CSE machines, make sure that you have enough disk space to run the server. The simplest way to ensure this is to delete then re-install your PostgreSQL server.

    Check where your Python interpreter is located. If not in /usr/bin/python3 , the best option is to change the name of the interpreter on the first line of each script to be the full path name of your Python interpreter.

    And make sure that your Python has access to psycopg2.

    Finally, read the whole of the Exam Instructions page to make sure that you know what to do. I'll post this later today (obviously without the links to the exam questions) for you to read.

  • More Exam Arrangements

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 01 December 2020, 02:57:25 PM.

    Given the experience with Webcms3 overload today, we'll be avoiding it as much as possible during the final exam.

    The exam paper will be accessible via:

    http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/20T3/exams/final/index.html

    This is the Instructions page, like the one for the Sample Exam. Obviously, it is not yet available.

    Everything you need in the exam, except lecture notes and slides, is accessible through the exam pages, and doesn't require going via Webcms3.

    To ask questions during the exam, send email to:

    cs3311@cse.unsw.edu.au

    If the question is specific to you, we'll reply to your email.

    If it looks like it might be generally useful, or important, we'll post it on:

    http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/20T3/exams/final/updates.html

    As much as possible, it would be useful to avoid submitting your answers via Webcms3. Use command-line give in preference. Of course, if you don't care that submission might be slow (because you've already finished the question), then use Webcms3. Otherwise, you will need to copy the files to the CSE servers and submit them there, i.e.

    scp FileName(s) YourUserName@cse.unsw.edu.au:

    ssh YourUserName@cse.unsw.edu.au

    give cs3311 exam_qX FileName(s)


    Keep this email for reference during the exam.

  • Exam Arrangements

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 30 November 2020, 09:11:30 PM.

    The COMP3311 exam is on Thursday 3rd December. Questions will become available at 10am AEDT on Thursday 3rd December. I will not accept submissions after 10pm on Thursday 3rd December (unless you have ELP). The Sample Exam gives a good idea of how the actual exam will be structured.

    I will not be answering any more Forum or email questions from Tuesday 1st December at 10pm AEDT. If you post anything related to assignment marking, it goes on my TODO list with no acknowledgement, and will be checked after the exam.

  • Ass2 Auto-marking

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 30 November 2020, 11:39:56 AM.

    Ok ok ... we're re-running the Ass2 auto-marking ... no need to keep complaining

  • Updates

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 28 November 2020, 09:58:51 PM, last modified Saturday 28 November 2020, 09:59:30 PM.

    I've fixed the marking for the quizzes (Q5,Q6,Q7) and posted the final quiz marks.

    I've fixed some bugs in the testing scripts for Q1 and Q2 in the sample exam. I did this earlier today. You can copy the new stuff from the directories under /web/cs3311/20T3/exams/sample/work. If you haven't yet unzipped exam-work.zip, it already contains the fixes.

    I've added submission just for Q1 and Q6 in the sample exam. Just so you can see how you might submit your answers during the exam. The Webcms3 interface for give'ing them is available under the Exams page.

    Ass2 marking is well underway. Ass3 marking will appear on Monday.

    Feel free to send mark queries, but I won't be fixing any more marks before the exam. I'll add the queries to my TODO list and send a quick acknowledgement, but that's it. Marks don't really need to be fixed until December 11, when we've marked the exam and are adding up all the marks to generate final marks. I'll fix them all between Dec 4 and Dec 11. And they can even be fixed after marks are released, if I miss something.

  • Sample Exam Sample Solutions

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 26 November 2020, 11:34:16 PM.

    I've posted sample solutions to the Sample Exam. Some have pretty bad style, and some I haven't check ed closely (after making changes from my test solutions). If you spot errors, let me know. If you think youhave a better solution for any question, feel free to post it in the comments below the sample solutions.

  • New Videos

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 24 November 2020, 02:12:23 PM.

    There are some new videos in the Week 11 section of Slides and Videos.

    One on installing PostgreSQL from source, a course review, and the Exam q+a from Tuesday morning

  • Updates to Quiz Marks

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 24 November 2020, 01:08:14 PM.

    A couple of quiz questions have been contentious: Quiz 5 Q3; Quiz 6 Q1; Quiz 7 Q3

    I will allow alternative answers to these question as correct and adjust the quiz marks accordingly. Anyone who had the original correct answer won't have their mark affected.

    I don't have time to do this before Thursday this week.

  • Exam Q+A Session

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 23 November 2020, 08:36:14 PM.

    There's a Q+A session to discuss the exam setup and structure from 11-12 on Tuesday 24 November. It'll be recorded, but you can't ask questions if you're watching a recording.

  • 20T3 myExperience reminder

    Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Monday 23 November 2020, 05:57:02 PM.

    Thanks to all of you who have completed myExperience so far.
    If you haven’t yet participated, you can use this link or look for the link in your student email.
    The survey closes on 26th of November.

    Your honest, constructive feedback is valued.
    Results from this survey help enhance courses and teaching at UNSW.
    Your feedback makes a difference for the next group of students taking your courses, just as feedback from students taking courses you plan to take makes a difference for you.

    myExperience is confidential, your identity is not included in reports.
    Results of the survey are not made available until your course results are released.

  • Sample Exam (draft)

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 22 November 2020, 11:58:16 PM.

    OK ... that's the last time I think "Here's an old sample exam.Just need to tweak a few things and we're done"! ... after far too many hours work I've knocked the old Sample Exam (now unrecognisable) into it's new form ... accessible via the Sample Exam link.

    You can't submit stuff. I'll set that up later. And I'll make some sample solutions available later as well.

    Because of the above, I haven't had time to make the videos. Tomorrow.

    Let me know if there are bugs/typos/etc in the exam paper or associated material.

    One thing to note: if you're working on it at home, and your Python3 isn't in /usr/bin, you'll need to tweak path names in the #! lines in the q6 and q7 scripts.

  • CSE servers under heavy load

    Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Saturday 21 November 2020, 09:39:08 PM.

    The CSE servers are currently under heavy heavy load, corelli (the VScode) server has a load average of 500!

    If you are experiencing a slow connection consider switching to Vlab or pure SSH.

    It is very likely that a similar situation will arise in our final exam. be prepared for a slow VScode experience and consider your alternatives.

    Grieg also has a high user count, if you haven't got a postgreSQL server on your local computer you should think about setting one up for use in the exam.

  • The Sample Exam is coming ...

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 21 November 2020, 04:35:37 PM, last modified Saturday 21 November 2020, 04:36:58 PM.

    I thought using an old sample exam would be easy ... not so ... it's almost like writing the full final exam ... I'll finish it tomorrow (Sun 22 Nov)

  • What's Happening in COMP3311?

    Posted by John Shepherd Friday 20 November 2020, 09:29:13 AM.

    I'll finish the Sample Exam this afternoon (I'm stuck in meetings all morning).

    We'll get onto the Ass2 marking ASAP, and I'll sort out all of those other marking tweaks (see the Week 10 Preview video) next week.

    I'll be holding an Exam Q+A next Tuesday (24 Nov) at 11-12 on Bb Collaborate. And more Q+A's later in the week, if there's demand.

    If you've left your Ass3 to this weekend, there won't be fast response to Forum questions (unless other students respond). I'm away all Saturday (once again). And if you hit the Forum with questions every 2 minutes on Sunday, it's going to be hard to keep up.

    I would strongly suggest, for the exam, that you install PostgreSQL on your home machine, especially if it's a Mac. I'll make a video on how to do this over the weekend. And I'll finish off those last two Week 10 videos on the weekend as well.

  • Can't start server? Log file empty?

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 19 November 2020, 06:10:37 PM, last modified Thursday 19 November 2020, 06:13:09 PM.

    Maybe you've exceeded your disk quota on Grieg.

    Since you can't start the server to remove databases, the simplest strategy is 

    grieg$ source /srvr/$USER/env
grieg$ rm -fr /srvr/$USER/pgsql/
grieg$ ~cs3311/bin/pginit

    You definitely need to make sure that your server will start properly before the exam.

    And, of course, you have an assignment due on Monday.

  • Quiz 8 Q4 Bug

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 17 November 2020, 06:08:17 PM.

    Option (d) in this question had the wrong table name. It wasn't an attempt to be tricky.

    If you already took the quiz, you might want to revisit this question.

  • Ass3 Testing Script

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 16 November 2020, 06:26:28 PM.

    I've set up the testing script. Details on how to extract/use it are here .

    No doubt you will let me know ASAP if it has any bugs.

  • Poll: Where to do exam?

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 16 November 2020, 09:32:08 AM.

    Obviously you can be physically located anywhere to take the exam.

    But what computing environment do you plan to use for the prac questions?

    Please let me know via the Poll .

    All answers during the exam are ultimately submitted via give or Webcms3.

  • Saturday 14 November

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 14 November 2020, 07:04:16 AM.

    I'm off-the-air all day today (until 7pm).

    Webcms3 will be down again this evening (between 5-7).

    You can access course content via https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/20T3/index.php

  • Assignment 3 Updates

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 11 November 2020, 05:04:05 PM, last modified Wednesday 11 November 2020, 05:04:55 PM.

    Based on the first round of "What about this case?" reports, I've updated the spec and made some tweaks to the sample outputs.

    Hopefully, given that this database is simpler and the outputs are relatively simple, there won't be too many more of these (which I assume you will now take as a challenge).

    Note there is some "dirty" data in this database as well (some combinations of null attributes that really shouldn't happen, etc.)

  • Assignment 3

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 09 November 2020, 10:54:25 PM.

    The spec (+ database + template files) for Assignment 3 is now available.

    Let me know ASAP any bugs you find in the spec, example outputs, etc.

  • Quiz 7

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 08 November 2020, 11:17:11 PM.

    If you did Quiz 7 before 11pm on Sunday, you might want to revisit Q4. There was a typo. Now fixed.

  • Grieg/Webcms3 Slowdown

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 01 November 2020, 05:12:06 PM, last modified Friday 06 November 2020, 12:06:08 PM.

    The slowdowns this afternoon (Sun 1 Nov), were due to the postgrad database course having an assignment due at 5pm today.

    No doubt they were all running PostgreSQL servers on Grieg and submitting through Webcms3 (which causes problems if you don't set up the Give spec right).

    Hopefully now Grieg will be faster and Webcms3 will too ...

  • check2.sql ... q8a_expected

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 01 November 2020, 03:06:58 PM.

    It has been pointed out that the expected output for q8a in check2.sql violates the spec.

    I've changed it so that it's consistent with the spec.

    Finding this out on Friday would have helped.

  • Running out of space

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 01 November 2020, 08:48:24 AM.

    Some people are reporting problems with disk space on /srvr/...

    Two possibilities:

    1. you run a query and it runs out of space ... check your join conditions
    2. you have too much stuff under /srvr/$USER/pgsql/data/base
      • run psql -l to see what databases you have
      • remove any that you don't need
      • DO NOT remove databases: postgres, template0, template1

    As a last resort

    • make sure you have no useful files (e.g. ass2.sql) under /srvr/$USER/pgsql
    • make sure that any views/functions in your databases are also in files outside the database
    • run the command rm -r /srvr/$USER/pgsql (completely removes your PostgreSQL server)
    • re-install the server as described in Prac 02

  • check2.sql

    Posted by John Shepherd Friday 30 October 2020, 05:26:04 PM.

    Finally got a chance to make this ... 

    psql mymy2 -f /web/cs3311/20T3/assignments/ass2/check2.sql

    And then run the tests.

  • Tutorial Attendance

    Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Friday 30 October 2020, 04:05:31 PM, last modified Sunday 01 November 2020, 08:40:22 AM.

    Many tutors are noticing that their tutorials have low single digits of students attending.

    Tutorials are provided for your benefit and offer a great time to revise course material and ask questions about lecture content and assignments.

    We highly advise that you continue to make use of this time for the rest of the course.

  • Saturday 31 October

    Posted by John Shepherd Friday 30 October 2020, 09:25:31 AM.

    It's good to see that you're helping each other on the forum. You'll need to do that more on Saturday because I'll be away from my keyboard all day. If tutors want to chip in as well, that would be useful. Just don't post large slabs of SQL from your solutions.

    Also, Webcms3 will have some downtime for about an hour starting 5pm Saturday. Hopefully, it will come back with an improved forum ... hopefully.

  • mymy2 database v1

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 29 October 2020, 10:00:22 PM, last modified Friday 30 October 2020, 02:19:54 PM.

    The final (I hope) version of the mymy2 database is now available. I've updated the Examples . I'll do check2.sql on Friday.

    To set up the new database 

    log in to grieg, source your env file, start your PG server
dropdb mymy2   (if you have one)
createdb mymy2
bzcat /web/cs3311/20T3/assignments/ass2/mymy2.dump.bz2 | psql mymy2

    Some things are a bit sparse (e.g. few recent courses have convenors).

    Let me know of any problems asap.

    Update : it seems that I created a bunch of course_enrolments tuples which had 0 mark, when it should have been NULL.

    I just updated mymy2.dump.bz to fix this.

    You can fix it in your own mymy2 database easily enough: 

    update course_enrolments set mark=null where grade in ('SY','XE','T','PE');

  • mymy2 database v1

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 29 October 2020, 12:05:47 AM, last modified Thursday 29 October 2020, 12:10:30 AM.

    I've put up an initial version of the mymy2 database and added some example outputs into the spec.

    To use this, you will probably need to remove you mymy1 database, making sure that you've got all of the function and view definitions in another file (e.g. ass2.sql )

    To load up the new database: 

    log in to grieg, source your env file, start your PG server
created mymy2
bzcat /web/cs3311/20T3/assignments/ass2/mymy2a.dump.bz2 | psql mymy2

    And then load up your ass2.sql file and start testing.

    I'll clean it up tomorrow and release a more complete version. None of the example tests will change in the updated version.

    Don't tell me that the new version breaks some assumptions, e.g. a student can be enrolled in 2 programs in a given term. I'll fix these tomorrow.

  • Online Session Wed 28 Oct

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 28 October 2020, 12:17:26 AM.

    Reminder that the Online Sessions now start at 9:40am.

    It's futile to try to answer questions on the assignment in this session, because you'll all have different problems and 10 minutes I spend on one person's problem is likely 10 not-useful minutes for everyone else. The forum probably works better for individual problems. However, in the session I will have a play with the mymy1 database and preview mymy2 and how I built it ... plus triggers and aggregates (which may end up not happening until Thursday).

  • Assignment 2 Update

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 28 October 2020, 12:10:14 AM.

    I have almost finished creating the mymy2 database (it's a lot of work ... more than I was expecting). I should have it finished by Wednesday evening (Wednesday is full of meetings, and tomorrow I have to go to POW to get my arm checked).

    And I'll add a marks breakdown for they Style assessment after Arthur Fung pointed out that I'd forgotten to include it in the spec. Summary: it'll be 3 marks (not 3/16, but 3/30*), and will consider the usual style characteristics (code layout, breaking queries and functions into sensible moderate-sized chunks, good use of abstraction, etc.). I was tempted to make it more, but I assume by the time you reach COMP3 courses, that you always write good-quality and eminently readable code.

    *The total marks, if you add up all the components, including style, is 30. This will be scaled into the mark out of 16 for this assignment.

  • check1.sql

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 25 October 2020, 06:58:07 PM, last modified Sunday 25 October 2020, 07:00:00 PM.

    The check1.sql script is now available. Instructions for use are under the assignment pages .

    Let me know about all the inevitable bugs ASAP.

    Now for the mymy2 database.

    There are also some more examples on the newly-named Examples page.

  • Assignment 2

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 20 October 2020, 10:21:45 PM.

    I think the spec is now plausible ... thanks to some "early adopters" who pointed out some special cases that I had not anticipated.

    The mymy1 database is based on real data, which turns out to be quite "dirty" in places, as I said in the spec into. I will try to make mymy2 a little cleaner.

    No doubt you will discover more edge cases, which I will need to document in the spec. These will be in red .

    I'm slowly adding more example cases, and will soon have a check1.sql for you to play with. Note that checkX.sql doesn't give any real extra benefits above the file of example cases; just makes it more convenient to see if your code is working.

    Note that the checkX.sql files that we will use for auto-marking will have extra tests beyond the supplied ones, but we'll avoid adding extra tests that exercise obscure cases in the database.

    Finally do not leave this assignment until Friday next week. You will not have time to understand the database and solve the problems if you leave it too late.

  • Webcms3 off-the-air Wed 6-9

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 20 October 2020, 10:40:21 AM, last modified Tuesday 20 October 2020, 10:40:35 AM.

    Warning : Webcms3 will be getting some upgrades on Wednesday (Oct 21) evening from 6-9.

    If you need to access course content during that period, try: https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/20T3/index.php

  • Online Sessions in Week 06

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 19 October 2020, 07:53:01 PM.

    I'll run an online session on Wednesday from 9.40am - ...

    No session on Thursday

    I'm assuming that most questions will be on Assignment 2

  • Assignment 2 ... enough to get started

    Posted by John Shepherd Friday 16 October 2020, 12:45:40 AM, last modified Saturday 17 October 2020, 03:50:27 PM.

    A 95% final draft of Assignment 2 is now available, containing

    • the spec (queries and functions)
    • the database (mymy1.dump.bz2)
    • database ER and SQL descriptions

    What's still needed?

    • examples of usage of views and functions
    • the check1.sql script to auto-check
    • mymy2.dump.bz2 and check2.sql

    The mymy2 database instance and the check2.sql script will come next week. The others, ASAP.

    In the meantime load up the mymy1 database instance and start exploring.

    Update : most of usage examples are now there; the description for transcripts (Q8) was way incomplete, but has now been completed.

  • Quiz 4, Q1: Wrong Answer in Forum

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 15 October 2020, 04:48:50 PM.

    There was a question on the forum about Quiz4 Q1 that I answered incorrectly.

    Does this imply a list of all the x tuples in the system?

    I said: No. Just the x tuples that are referenced by an FK in y.

    In fact, it is supposed to include all x tuples along with a count, which may be zero.

    If you based your answer to the question on my original response, then you might want to reconsider, and resubmit the quiz.

  • New time for Online Problem-solving session

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 15 October 2020, 08:46:33 AM.

    The Online Problem-solving session will start at 9:40 today (Thu 15 Oct).

    Sorry about the short notice. The video will be available later today if you miss the start.

  • PgAdmin

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 14 October 2020, 12:32:32 PM, last modified Wednesday 14 October 2020, 12:32:43 PM.

    Is anyone successfully using pgAdmin 4 on their home machine under Windows?

    If so, could you let us know the precise steps to set it up. Either send an email to me, and I'll put it under documentation, or post a thread under QandA.

    Thanks for any suggestions.

  • RAISE NOTICE on Grieg

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 13 October 2020, 04:59:03 PM, last modified Tuesday 13 October 2020, 04:59:49 PM.

    It looks like we may have configured the PostgreSQL servers on Grieg so that RAISE NOTICE doesn't produce output in the psql client.

    Rather than trying to fix your PostgreSQL configuration file, use RAISE INFO instead.

  • Webcms3 Overload

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 11 October 2020, 11:49:19 PM.

    Webcms3 is running s-l-o-w at the moment. The assignment deadline is rapidly approaching. Coincidence?

    I think not.

    If you don't want to be one of those people sitting waiting for a submission via Webcms3, then copy your files to a CSE server and submit via the command-line.

    Well done to the people who submitted early. For the rest of you, we'll have a grace period up to 1am where we won't apply any late penalty.

  • Assignment 1 Questions

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 07 October 2020, 11:04:37 PM, last modified Wednesday 07 October 2020, 11:10:09 PM.

    I have just spent 3 hours answering questions on the assignment. Pretty much as soon as I answer one, another one appears. This is clearly not sustainable. Don't expect fast responses to questions between now and Sunday 11:59. I have other work to do, which I am going to prioritise.

    To answer a common question ... the auto-tester cannot check the finer details of types/domains/constraints. Thus the assignment won't be totally auto-marked. The tutors will manually assess the fine details of types/domains/constraints. They will also look for unexpected names, and bump the marks for those if they're reasonable.

  • Where has schema.sql gone?

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 07 October 2020, 08:32:55 PM.

    I've answered this question (or variations on it) a few times already.

    "I run the command 

    psql ass1 -f schema.sql

    and it tells me that schema.sql is not found."

    Here's a hint: no matter what directory you are in when you run the command: 

    ssh grieg

    you will be placed back in your home directory. If schema.sql is not in that directory, change to the directory where it is and try again.

  • Week 04

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 04 October 2020, 06:03:41 PM.

    Now we're into Week 04, and hopefully you're feeling a bit more confident with SQL (DDL and Queries).

    This week we'll take a deeper look at SQL and try to remedy some of its limitations via stored procedures.

    Tutes this week will look at SQL queries. There's also a Quiz on SQL. And a couple of new prac exercises: 03 is on SQL DDL, and 04 is on SQL queries.

    There's been some queries about Assignment 1 schema.sql files failing the auto-check. As Dylan and I have mentioned on the forums, it's difficult to predict all the naming variations that people will come up with, even when the naming conventions are precise.

    Don't panic. We'll slowly make auto-check more generous as more variations appear. And even it fails some parts of the auto-check after submission, all schema.sql will be looked at by the tutors and reasonable names will score ok marks.

    Two specific namings that have caused grief ...

    • domains/types ... if you're creating new types, name the type after the primary attribute it's being applied to (i.e attribute and type have the same name)
    • n:m relationships ... name the table representing the relationship after the relationship name in the ER diagram (doesn't have to be plural)

    We haven't yet set the auto-check up to handle all such situations, but will soon.

    Enjoy Week 04.

  • Slides Errata

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 03 October 2020, 10:51:14 AM, last modified Saturday 03 October 2020, 10:52:23 AM.

    A few errors on the slides made their way into the videos. I've fixed the slides, but fixing the videos is beyond my video editing ability. So, I've added a Slides Errata page. Check that out before watching a video, just in case there's an error on that video.

    I know there are earlier errors that I fixed on the slides, but haven't yet added the Slides Errata page. I'll gradually track these down. Feel free to remind me.

  • Beer Database Dump

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 29 September 2020, 05:10:01 PM.

    I've put a dump of the Beer database that I used in the SQL videos and will use in the Week03 Online Sessions. If you've got a PostgreSQL server, it would be worth creating a copy of the database on your server so that you can "play along at home". /if you don't have a PostgreSQL server yet, why not?

  • Week 03

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 28 September 2020, 09:16:37 AM.

    Week 03 is off and running. Quiz 2 is now available and I've started work on the topic videos for the week. The weekly preview video is already done. The tute exercises cover last week's topics (mapping ER to SQL DDL), which is also the topic of Assignment 1 . Solutions for Week 02 tute exercises and quiz 1 are available later today (Monday).

  • Ass1 Testing Resources

    Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Sunday 27 September 2020, 01:38:41 PM, last modified Monday 28 September 2020, 05:20:36 PM.

    An initial Assignment 1 testing script is now available .

    The script will be updated in the following days to add more checks.

    Due to a technical limitation, the script cannot be run on grieg.

    Make sure you are logged into any other CSE server (of VLAB machine) before running the 3311 check_ass1 command.

    Apologies to everyone who has had problems because of this issue.

  • Assignment 1 Spec Updates

    Posted by John Shepherd Friday 25 September 2020, 08:10:55 AM, last modified Saturday 26 September 2020, 10:57:44 PM.

    I've added a page to keep track of updates to the Assignment 1 spec. Yifan He already spotted that I'd forgotten to include alarms on Events in the ER diagram (now fixed). And Michael Hopkins has pointed out a few more. Please have a look at the spec soon, so we can sort out any other issues as soon as possible.

    And Dylan reminded that there was no section on Assessment. Now there is ... at the end of the Spec. The main "change" is that there's now a style mark, and more detail on what the auto-marker is looking for.

  • Quiz 1 due tomorrow

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 24 September 2020, 09:37:30 PM, last modified Thursday 24 September 2020, 09:37:55 PM.

    The first quiz is due before tomorrow (Fri 29 Sept) at midnight. So far, less than 2/3 of the class have done it. In theory, it's easy marks, and useful for revision. No extensions.

  • Assignment 1

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 24 September 2020, 05:43:13 PM.

    The spec for the first assignment is now available.

    Since specs almost always need clarifying/tweaking, let know about any issues asap (and definitely by Monday).

  • Week 02 Activities

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 20 September 2020, 08:47:06 PM.

    The activities for Week 02 are now set up: Quiz 1 , Prac 02 , Tute Exercises

    There's also 10 minute Week 02 Preview video, and the topic videos are starting to appear, under Slides and Videos

    Assignment 1 (Mapping an ER design to SQL) will be available soon.

  • Tutorials start in Week 2

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 16 September 2020, 07:43:11 PM, last modified Wednesday 16 September 2020, 11:34:35 PM.

    I may not have said this anywhere (I thought I had), but tutes don't start until Week 02. And a reminder that they are 90 minutes long.

    The exercises for the Week 02 tutorials are now available.

  • Online Sessions in Week 08 in Week 10

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 16 September 2020, 12:01:15 PM.

    Sorry about this morning's glitch in the online problem-solving session.

    I've added a new entry to the sidebar "Online Sessions". There I'll put the slides, the videos, and all the stuff I type in during the session.

  • Problem-solving Session Wed 16 September

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 16 September 2020, 08:29:00 AM.

    Reminder: online problem-solving sessions start today (Wed 16 Sept) from 10-11.

    To access the session go to the Moodle site and click on the "Tutorials and Problem-solving Sessions" link.

    It's remotely possible that you might be able to go direct to the BlackBoard Collaborate page, but I'm not convinced this will work without going via a Moodle login.

    I am guessing the next bit, because I don't know what you see on the Collaborate page , but ...

    The first entry is "Problem-Solving Sessions (Wed,Thu) ... Recurring...". If you click on that, it will open a list of all the sessions. Choose the one for today.

    See you at 10am!

  • New Video and Prac Exercise

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 14 September 2020, 11:12:22 PM.

    The video on the Relational Model is now available.

    If you plan to attend the problem-solving session on Wednesday, it would be worth looking at the Data Modelling, ER and Relational videos beforehand.

    The first Prac Exercise is also now available.

  • Welcome to COMP3311 Week 01

    Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 13 September 2020, 11:37:49 PM.

    I've put up some topic videos under Slides and Videos for Week 01. In particular, there's the first of the weekly preview videos. Tutes start in Week 02, as do quizzes. I'll put up the rest of the Week 01 topic videos and the first Prac Exercise soon.

  • Welcome Video, and Polls, Polls, Polls

    Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 10 September 2020, 12:07:34 AM.

    I've put up a Welcome video .

    Please fill out the polls if you haven't yet done so. I'd like to get at least half the class to do each poll. Each poll should take less than a minute to fill.

  • Don't Like Fully Online?

    Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 09 September 2020, 10:50:12 AM.

    If you don't fancy taking COMP3311 as a fully online course, I should mention that it is running in Term 1 next year, with Raymond Wong as the lecturer. Hopefully, we'll be back to on-campus teaching by then.

  • The Exam is Online

    Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 08 September 2020, 09:21:16 AM, last modified Tuesday 08 September 2020, 09:23:08 AM.

    Thanks to all those people who pointed to the bit in the Course Outline where it said that the exam would be held in the CSE Labs.

    That's where I would like to do it, but there's no chance of being able to run lab-based exams in 20T3.

    So ... the exam is online , as it says elsewhere in the Course Outline.

    DB nerd note: this is actually a nice example of redundancy leading to inconsistency, something we try to avoid in database design.

  • Course Outline and Poll

    Posted by John Shepherd Monday 07 September 2020, 11:03:48 PM, last modified Monday 07 September 2020, 11:42:32 PM.

    I've posted the Course Outline . Please read it and let me know ASAP if there's anything unclear, ambiguous or inconsistent.

    Also, there's a new poll to find out how early you'd like to get up on Wednesday and Thursday.

  • Lecture Videos

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 05 September 2020, 04:37:01 PM.

    I'll be re-making all the COMP3311 videos this term, as shorter topic-based videos.

    If you can't wait for that, the lectures from 19T3 are available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWpbPk2i8Qw... (of course, they are 1-hour multi-topic chunks).

    There are also some older videos that I made for an online version of thePG Intro Database course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWpbPk2i8Qw... . They're all relevant to COMP3311 and some use the light board, so are ultra-cool.

  • Welcome to COMP3311 20T3

    Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 29 August 2020, 11:02:28 AM, last modified Thursday 03 September 2020, 03:01:38 PM.

    Welcome to COMP3311 20T3 Database Systems.

    This course provides an introduction to relational database systems, their design and use.

    By the end of the course, you should be able to look at a problem, devise a data model to represent the information in the problem space, use this design to build a relational database, insert data into and extract information from the database, and write simple Python scripts to interact with the database.

    There are no lectures. All content will be available through short(ish) topic-based videos and slides/notes. There will be live online problem-solving sessions from 10-11 on Wednesday and Thursday (this is the second hour of the scheduled lecture slots; I'm assuming that nobody wants to start a live online session at 9am. There will also be weekly 90 minute tutorials in small groups (well, 25 students/tute).

    There will be three assignments: (1) developing a relational schema, (2) implementing SQL queries and PLpgSQL functions to solve problems on a defined database, (3) writing Python scripts to interact with a defined database. There will also be weekly on-line quizzes.

    I am currently debating whether to have an exam or not, given the amount of cheating that occurred in the online exams in 20T2. It will certainly not be a 24-hour exam. My clear preference would be to have an in-lab invigilated exam, but it looks like COVID is going to prevent that.

    I've finally decided ... it will be a ~3-hour exam, open for a 6-hour time-period, primarily based on SQL and PLpgSQL, comprising 40% of the overall course mark. We'll sort out how to deal with people in different time-zones later.

Back to top

COMP3311 20T3 (Database Systems) is powered by WebCMS3
CRICOS Provider No. 00098G