COMP3311 Notices

3311 Supp Exam

Posted by Dong Wen Friday 27 May 2022, 12:26:44 PM, last modified Friday 27 May 2022, 12:27:12 PM.

We have sent detailed instructions for supp exam to each corresponding student. If you are attending the supp exam but did not received the email, let me know.

Supp Exam

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 25 May 2022, 12:49:45 PM.

This is a gentle reminder that the COMP3311 Supp Exam will be held on Friday 27 May from 1pm to 5pm.

The exam format will be the same as the Final Exam (but all new questions). We will release the exam paper on webcms during 12:30 -- 13:00 on Friday.

3311 Results

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 19 May 2022, 02:31:53 PM.

The marks for 3311 are released today. Hope you are happy with that. Note that we have added bonus points to every student, and the average mark in this term is almost the same as that in 21T3 (diff < 2).

Really glad to meet and talk many of 3311 students in this term. Let me know if you have any question or need any help in the future.

Supplementary Exam

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 18 May 2022, 10:18:23 PM.

The supplementary Exam for 3311_22T1 will be on Friday 27 May (1pm -- 5pm) . The process of supplementary exam will be similar to that of the final exam. More instructions will be given in the next week.

Update

Posted by Dong Wen Friday 06 May 2022, 03:41:38 PM.

We have update Q8 question to make it clearer: "All of the recent members" => "Name and ID of all recent members"

See https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/22T1/exams/exam/updates.html

Q3 Question update

Posted by Dong Wen Friday 06 May 2022, 01:53:01 PM.

We have updated Q3 question to make it clearer.

Final Exam Released

Posted by Dong Wen Friday 06 May 2022, 12:48:40 PM.

The exam paper has been released on webcms . The link is as follows.

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/22T1/exams/exam/

Let us know if there is any incorrect link.

Good luck~

Final Exam

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 05 May 2022, 02:40:30 PM.

We will release the exam paper on webcms at around 12:50 . We have opened the Moodle submission page, and you can have a look. During the exam, we would not answer any personal configuration or network issues. You should get prepared for the exam, e.g., use a fully charged machine (for power outage) and a smart phone (used as a Hotspot for network outage)...

We will conduct strictly plagiarism checking for the exam submissions. Please do not try to be a 'hero' to break the rule.

Assignment 2 Marks and Final Exam Tips

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 02 May 2022, 01:28:56 PM.

Assignment 2 marks have been released. Let us know if there are any marking questions. A sample solution written by tutors is also uploaded.

BTW, the final response rate of MyExperience is 54%. Thanks for your help.

Tips for the final exam:

Time: Friday 6 May, 1pm -- 5pm . See more details in week10 Thursday lecture recording or the exam lecture notes .

We will release the final exam paper before 1pm. You will be notified via a webcms notice (email to all students). Anything submitted after 5pm AEST Friday 6 May will be ignored (unless you have adjustments based on an Equitable Learning Plan).

During the exam, you should send any concerns to my email address (dong.wen@unsw.edu.au). Do not send anything on the forum. If there is any update for questions, we will post updates both as webcms Notices (email to all students) and in the Update page.

Take some time to have a look at the sample exam. Read the instruction page carefully. The instruction of the final exam is almost the same. Try to configure the database in the sample exam and also setup your environment well. We cannot give an extension if someone does not know how to setup the environment or load the database. So, test it and get prepared now. Let us know if you have any question about the instruction in the sample exam.

Quiz 6

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 27 April 2022, 10:09:27 PM.

Hi,

Marks for Quiz6 have been released. After reviewing the quiz, we found some ambiguities in Q1. Therefore, we give 1 mark (Q1) for every student who attempted the question. The correct Q1 answer should be AB, CDE, AC, AF.

Most Ass2 marking jobs are done except some for ELS students. We expect to release marks at this weekend.

Contact me if you have any concern about Q1, quiz marking and final exam.

Dong

HDR Scholarship opportunities for domestic students

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 26 April 2022, 08:13:35 PM.

FYI

Several HDR (PhD/Mphil) scholarships for domestic students are released by CSE today. 13 May is the deadline to apply for HDR scholarships at GRS for T3 2022 start . See the following link for more details.

https://www.unsw.edu.au/engineering/our-schools/computer-science-and-engineering/our-research/potential-phd-projects

My Experience Survey end on Thursday

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 26 April 2022, 01:42:25 PM.

MyExperience will be closed on 28th Apr. The current response rate is pretty low (20%). You can directly fill the survey via the following link.

https://myexperience.unsw.edu.au/

We will give everyone a 1 mark bonus on the Exam if the response rate hits 50%. We cannot give the bonus just to the people who fill the survey since the survey is anonymous.

Week 10

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 19 April 2022, 10:56:27 AM.

Welcome to the last week of 3311.

Assignment 2 is due by Today (Tuesday) 9PM .

The last Quiz ( Quiz 6 ) also has been released and is due Friday 9PM.

The lecture and tutorial materials for week 10 have been uploaded.

Our final exam is on 6th May. We have uploaded a sample exam to Webcms. I will leave some time in our last lecture (Thursday) to hold a help session for exam preparation. Of course, you are always welcome to send us your questions via email or on the forum.

MyExperience survey is released. Take 2 minutes to have a look and tell us how you feel about this course.

Quiz 4 Marks & Assignment 2 Extension

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 07 April 2022, 10:29:48 AM.

Results for Quiz 4 have been released. Let us know if you have any marking questions.

The due date of assignment 2 is extended to 9PM 19 April (Tuesday) due to the Easter Long Weekend . If you would like to apply the special consideration, you should submit your application with supported documents before 13th April, which gives the corresponding department 2--3 business days to process it.

Tutorial Rooms Update

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 05 April 2022, 10:39:20 AM.

This is a reminder that two tutorials (below) located in the B27 must be moved to Ainsworth G01 due to flooding for the rest of the term .

COMP3311-T1U1-TUT/18:1 (Wed 15:30 -- 17:00)
COMP3311-T1U1-TUT/17:1 (Wed 14:00 -- 15:30)

Week 8

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 04 April 2022, 12:04:42 PM.

Course materials ( Lectures & Tutorials ) for Week 8 have been release on Webcms.

Quiz 5 is released on Moodle. The due date is 9PM 8th Apr (Friday) .

Assignment 1 Results

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 31 March 2022, 10:56:39 AM.

Marks for Assignment 1 have been released. You can see the comments with the marker email on Moodle. Send an email to your marker and cc me if you have any marking question or any error exists.

We also have uploaded a sample solution written by our tutors. Below is the link.

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/22T1/assignments/ass1/ass1_solution.sql

BTW, do not forget the Quiz 4 in this week.

​Assignment 2 & Quiz 4 & Week 7

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 28 March 2022, 01:33:24 PM.

Welcome back to COMP3311 Week 7.

Ass1 Marks. Assignment 1 marking for most students are completed. We expect to release the results on Thursday.

Ass2. We have released the Assignment 2 . The due date is 9PM 15th Apr . There are four questions in Assignment 2. Each question is taken charge by a tutor as follows.

Q1: xianhang.zhang@unsw.edu.au

Q2: k.hao@unsw.edu.au

Q3: yiqi.wang1@unsw.edu.au

Q4: deming.chu@unsw.edu.au

If you have any private inquiry regarding a specific question, send an email to the corresponding tutor, but of course, they cannot provide a solution or help debug your code. Tutors will reply each email or forum question in 12 hours.

For the application of special consideration, the school should take 2--3 business days to process the application. If you are a potential special consideration applicant, please submit the application earlier and make sure the application is granted by the school before the deadline.

Ass2 Tips. All Ass2 questions require Python and Psycopg2. I will introduce them in Week 7 Lectures. If you are not quite familiar with Python, this is a good chance to have a try. There are a huge amount of Python tutorials on Google and Youtube. Pick one and have a look. We will not use any advanced features of Python. We still mainly focus on retrieving data from PostgreSQL and doing some formatting works. Below are official websites of Python and Psycopg2.

https://www.python.org/about/gettingstarted/

https://www.psycopg.org/docs/

We have experienced "the server performance" in the last week of Ass1. Anyone who has used VScode remote-ssh should have received an email from Andrew. Please use ssh-fs instead of remote-ssh if you are using VScode. Even though we have requested the system team to improve the server, it is hard to expect they increase the hardware specification in these two weeks. Therefore, remember to setup your local environment as a backup for the assignment and the final exam. If you are using windows and have any difficult in your local environment setup, send an email to our course admin (qsfeng@cse.unsw.edu.au). He is also using Windows. Let me know if you have any difficult in other systems. MacOS has integrated with Python.

Q&A in Tutorials. Starting from this week, we have asked all tutors to leave 10--20mins to answer questions in tutorials. You can directly ask your tutors regarding the environment setup or any other questions.

Quiz 4 is released and is due at 9PM 1st Apr.

Teaching materials ( lecture & tutorial ) of week 7 are released on Webcms. Prac exercise 7 is released.

Moodle Enhance Survey. As advised by the Moodle team, the Moodle Enhance student survey is now available for students to complete until midnight Friday 01 April. You can get links here . The students have been invited to participate via email and the first 700 respondents will be able to choose between a coffee voucher or a $5 voucher to the Grad Shop. It should take 2 minutes for students to complete the survey.

No course in week 6 & Server Maintenance

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 21 March 2022, 01:42:21 PM.

This is a reminder that there is no lecture and tutorial in this week .

According to the report by SS team, there are still a lot of students using their home directories instead of /localstorage on vxdb (mainly caused by VScode remote-ssh extensions), this is causing a lot of NFS network traffic and will slow things down dramatically. The remote-ssh extension creates many server files in your home directories. Please please please use ssh-fs instead of remote-ssh if you are using VScode.

Server Maintenance. Given the vxdb server issues over the last week, the system team notified us that they will schedule a maintenance window for nw-syd-vxdb from 5am to 7am, Tuesday, 22 March , to re-instantiate the automatic killing of left-over and background user processes on vxdb when the user ends their session.

Server Maintenance Impact. 1) During the change currently logged-in users on vxdb may get logged out unexpectedly, 2) There may be a short period during the change when users will be unable to log in to vxdb, 3) Long-term: vxdb users will not be able to leave processes running after they log out, even if using tmux or screen as a few users do.

The maintenance won't solve the problem of using VSCode remote-ssh. So, take some time to setup your local environment as a backup for the assignment 2 which will be released in week 7.

Let us know if you have any difficult in local environment setup or ssh-fs usage. All of our course staffs are always here to help you~

​Special Consideration & PostgreSQL on Windows

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 17 March 2022, 06:44:19 PM.

If you have applied special consideration for the assignment, please also send me an email (ignore this if you have already sent). For all ELS and special consideration students who have been offered the assignment extension, you need to submit your assignment within 3 days (72h) after your deadline (late penalty applied after deadline of course). Then the submission window for all students will be closed. Send me an email if you have any question or difficult.

Our course admin has prepared a documentation for installing PostgreSQL on widows:

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/22T1/pracs/PostgreSQL_on_Windows.pdf

Reminder:

1) You should have received email that the class websites (webcms) will be down Monday (21st) morning 8am-10am. They need some maintenance.

2) There is no lecture or tutorial in week 6 .

Extension of Assignment 1 due to the server issue

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 16 March 2022, 10:59:34 PM.

We know many students are affected by the server issue, and we hear your voice. We decide to give all students one-day extension for the assignment. That means the new deadline is 9pm March 19 (Saturday) , which should be fairly enough to setup your local environment if you want.

For the server issue, unfortunately, everyone cannot guarantee the server always works well especially in the last week before the deadline. Please use SSH-FS if you are using vscode to connect the server. Of course, setting up your local environment is always the most efficient and safe way.

​VScode follow-up

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 16 March 2022, 03:15:28 PM.

VScode can run entirely nicely and with next to zero resource impact, if we just switch the plugin for remote work.

If we remove Remote-SSH and install SSH-FS instead, it only uses a single bog-standard sftp process on the server instead of a gigantic resource-eating custom nodejs application server installed in the homedir. It also cuts tens to hundreds of MB out of the disk quota usage as a bonus. That also speeds up your connection to server every time (but it is still highly recommended to setup postgresql in your local machine as a backup).

Our course admin have prepared a step-by-step tutorial for the usage of SSH-FS in VSCode, which is provided in the following link. There's maybe 5 minutes of learning curve, and you can just carry on.

https://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs3311/22T1/pracs/vscode_ssh_fs.pdf

It is also highly recommended to always use SSH-FS to connect all other CSE servers instead of Remote-SSH. A tutorial from the school about setting the extension for general CSE servers is also provided as follows.

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~learn/homecomputing/sshfs-remote/

Server Issue

Posted by Dong Wen Wednesday 16 March 2022, 12:02:32 PM.

I just contacted the system support team. They told me that there was over 800 (students from 3311 and the other similar database course) of network activity on the server from 9pm to 11pm yesterday. The load average has now dropped to more sensible levels (around 8) now.

Suggestions:

From system support team : CSE servers previously had significant problems with VScode. VScode is a resource hog and does not clean up after itself. Try to avoid using VScode.

My suggestion: As I mentioned in lectures, we cannot rely on the server. You can use it, but a safe way is to also install postgresql on your home machine as a backup.

Send me an email if you have any difficult with the server or local environment setup.

Assignment 1 & Week 5

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 14 March 2022, 02:12:38 PM.

This is a reminder that the Assignment 1 is due by Friday 9PM this week . The assignment file can be submitted multiple times. Therefore, do not submit it at the last second.

Before submitting your ass1.sql, you should make sure all syntax stuffs are correct. That means when you run 'psql mymy -f ass1.sql', no error is shown in the printed log. If there is a syntax error, all following script after the error will not be executed. If you want to give up answering a question (e.g., Q1), you can just write the following code in ass1.sql to avoid any syntax error.

create or replace view Q1(unswid, name) as select NULL, NULL;

However, you are always encouraged to have a try to write some codes even if your results cannot match the expected ones.

The lecture slides for week 5 have been uploaded, and there is no quiz or prac exercise this week.

Week 4

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 07 March 2022, 12:02:19 PM.

Quiz 3 is released and is due at 9PM 11th March, Friday .

Prac exercise 6 is released, which may give you some inspirations for the Assignment 1.

The teaching materials ( lecture & tutorial ) of week 4 are also released on Webcms.

Do not forget that Assignment 1 is due at 9PM 18th March .

Quiz 2

Posted by Dong Wen Friday 04 March 2022, 08:23:14 PM.

Don't forget that the Quiz 2 is due 9PM tonight. We find several students have not submitted answers.

Note: There are late penalties. Submission page will be closed on Wednesday, and all submissions will be auto-marked by the system.

Quiz 1 Result

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 03 March 2022, 11:13:35 AM.

Marks of Quiz 1 have been released. If you have late submission, the final mark is calculated via the following equation:

FinalMark = max( MarkOfFinalValidSubmission , MarkOfFinalLateSubmission - LatePenalty );

Send me an email if you have any question regarding the Quiz marks.

Severe Weather Sydney

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 01 March 2022, 11:17:16 AM.

There is a severe weather warning for Sydney. The timing and severity is still uncertain but it looks possible that travel to campus will be difficult or unsafe for some students on Wednesday.

If you have enrolled offline tutorials but have trouble coming to campus, just go to any online tutorial you like. The timetable can be found on Webcms .

Be safe~

Assignment & Quiz 2 & Week 3

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 28 February 2022, 12:08:18 PM.

Quiz 1 Submission & Marks. We found a few cases that do not have a valid (finished) submission before the deadline. That means you start a new attempt but never submit your answers. The system would not submit your attempt automatically if you only save your answers. Please do not forget to submit your attempt before the deadline next time. The system will consider your last finished attempt before the deadline. Marks of Quiz 1 will be automatically released on 2 March (Wednesday) .

Assignment 1. Assignment 1 has been released on Webcms . The deadline is 9pm 18 March (Friday) . Send an email to me (dong.wen@unsw.edu.au) and cc our course admin (q.feng.1@student.unsw.edu.au) if you have any question about it, or you are welcome to the help session after Thursday's lecture.

Quiz 2. Quiz 2 has been released. The deadline is 9pm 4 March (Friday) .

Course materials of week 3. Lecture slides and tutorials of week 3 have been released. We release both prac exercise 4 and prac exercise 5 to help you prepare you assignments.

Week2 Exercise & Quiz 1

Posted by Dong Wen Thursday 24 February 2022, 04:57:56 PM.

This is a reminder that Quiz 1 will be due by Friday 9pm.

Several solutions of online exercises have been uploaded to Webcms .

Week 2

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 21 February 2022, 10:52:09 AM.

What's happening in week 2 of COMP3311

Tutorials Commence ... See you tutors in this week. The tutorial material is uploaded under the Tutorials tab . All online tutorials are delivered via Moodle.

Quiz 1 ... You should have seen Quiz 1 on Moodle. There are four questions inside, due Friday 9pm. You can submit multiple times, and the system will only consider the last submission before the deadline.

Lecture Materials ... This week we will start to introduce SQL. Lecture materials have been uploaded under the Lectures tab .

New Prac Exercise 03 ... on SQL schemas and constraints.

Week 1

Posted by Dong Wen Tuesday 15 February 2022, 06:11:39 PM.

Hi,

Welcome again to the first week of 22T1. There are some FAQ during our first online lecture:

No Tutorial in Week 1 . Several students mentioned that there are tutorials in week 1 in their timetable. That should be some system error info. All tutorials will start from Week 2, and online tutorials will also be delivered via Moodle.

Teaching Materials. All slides for Week 1 are now available. Check out the Lectures link in the sidebar menu of Webcms. The recording of our first online lecture is also available in Moodle now. In the rest of this term, we will upload all lecture and tutorial materials of each week on Monday. The Course Notes tab is also available in Webcms, if you want to have a look more details of database systems in advance. Note that the course notes is an extension of our syllabus, which contains more details.

Setting up PostgreSQL. Have a look at Prac Exercise 2 , which provides a step-by-step instruction about how to configure PostgreSQL in our AWS server. I will run a help (consultation) session from 4pm to 6pm on Thursday following our online lecturer session. Feel free to send me an email if you have any personal request or suggestion.

Regards,

Dong

Welcome from COMP3311

Posted by Dong Wen Monday 07 February 2022, 12:33:45 PM.

Hi, all, and welcome to COMP3311 Database Systems!

As you can see, we still run a significant majority of course works online, including lectures, and all assessments. Several tutorial sessions are offline and provide you a chance of F2F communication with your tutors.

We manage the course with WebCMS3 ( https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP3311/22T1/ ) and Moodle . All announcements, lecture notes, lab notes, assignment spec, etc. are going to be posted in WebCMS3. Moodle is used to provide access to online live lectures and lecture recordings.

We will deliver lectures live online at the scheduled lecture time 14:00 – 16:00 Tuesday and 14:00 – 16:00 Thursday. Lectures will be delivered and also recorded in Blackboard Collaborate in Moodle. There are two ways to access the lecture:

1) You can access it directly from Moodle ( https://moodle.telt.unsw.edu.au ), find our course, click "lectures and recordings", click Menu (in up left corner), click "Sessions" to join a live lecture or "Recordings" to access the recorded lecture.

2) We will provide a copy of the link to access the lecture (live and recording) in the WebCMS Lectures Tab.

Before week 1, you can start to have a look at the course outline in WebCMS3. There are also some poll activities for you in the Activities Tab of WebCMS3, which help us understand your background.

Good luck, and look forward to meeting you soon~

Dong Wen

Lecturer-in-Charge