Final marks submitted ... just in time.
Congratulations to Florencia Irena and Yukai Miao for awesome performances.
Honourable mentions to Guannan Lin and Karl Krauth.
There's no need to send grovelling emails that you forgot to submit and you're worried about failing.
Much as I'd like to fail people who can't read simple instructions ...
What I always do with online exams (which I thought I'd mentioned in the lecture) is grab the submitted version (if any), the non-submitted version or the version in the Desktop, and choose the best-looking one for marking.
Lucky for some of you ...
But despite this ... only 26/102 people made a reasonable attempt at Q1 ... another 15 scraped a pass ... a further 28 submitted hopeless (generally non-compiling) programs ... and 33 didn't even attempt the question. Given that you were supposed to be competent C programmers at the start of the course, and given that the question should have been simple from your knowledge of Assignment 2, I wonder ...
Bring a pen. Bring your student card. Nothing else is required/allowed.
Get a good night's rest. Allow plenty of time to reach the labs by 8.45.
I'm "off the air" now for a while. I'll be at the exam tomorrow, but away after that, until early next week, at which point I will start marking your exams and finish marking your assignments.
Which lab you'll be in on Thursday is determined by the first letter(s) of your family name:
| Lab | Family Names |
| Viola Lab, J17 302A | A - DO |
| Flute Lab, J17 303 | DP - I |
| Bugle Lab, J17 305A | J - LIM |
| Cello Lab, J17 302B | LIN - Q |
| Oboe Lab, J17 304 | R - XI |
| Horn Lab, J17 305B | XJ - Z |
Example: if I were sitting the exam, with family name S hepherd, I'd be in the Oboe Lab
For those people who are interested, you will be able to use Python in the exam for calculations. It's not essential, of course, since there are other desk calculators available on the workstations (bc and xcalc).
Be there by 8.45 and take a few deep breaths. Good luck.
The exam will be held in the 3rd-floor labs (Viola, Cello, Flute, Oboe, Bugle, Horn) on Thursday 16 June. The exam starts at 9.00 and finishes at 12.00. Be in the area outside the labs by 8.45. I'll be posting a list of which students are allocated to which labs on this web site on Tuesday 14 June.
If you've never been in a CSE Lab, I'd suggest that you visit one before Thursday and get a feel for the computers. During the exam, you have a limited* environment using the fluxbox window manager, with editors like vim , emacs , gedit , nedit ; there are also calculator apps like xcalc and bc -l (the one I use in lectures). When you login to the exam environment, it opens a browser with the question paper; you can open xterms for compiling, etc. You submit all your answers online.
* The limitations are that you don't have access to anything outside the exam environment (e.g. no access to your account, no access to the class account, no access to email, no access to the Web, etc).
After the fifth question on this topic, it's clear that my notes were confusing, so I've re-written them to use the case where all B buffers are used in the first sorting pass, and n=B-1 input buffers and 1 output buffer are used in the subsequent merging passes.
The final Quiz is now online. Due before 11:59pm on
Friday (June 3)
. Sunday (June 5)
In the Exam, you'll have access to the Course Notes. If you spot any errors in these while revising, let me know ASAP so that I can fix them and you'll have a correct copy for the exam.
I've finally had some time to set the next Quiz, and also added some new Exercises and Pracs. Now to get onto the marks for Ass1 and Quizzes 3 and 4.
I've made a few changes to the Assignment 2 specification. Basically, I've brought the spec into line with what I said in last Monday's (Week 09) lecture, and cleaned up a few internal inconsistencies. The major difference to the original version is that you should not submit create.c , insert.c and select.c , because I plan to use these unchanged for the final testing. If anyone has already gone down an implementation path that involved changing these files, please let me know ASAP.
As of Saturday 20 April at 4pm, only 30 people have done Quiz 4. Don't forget to do it before midnight Sunday (if you want a couple of easy marks).
To avoid cluttering the Comments stream under the Assignment 2 specification page, I've created a new Bug Fixes page. Post queries about the requirements/theory under the Assignment 2 Spec/Submit page, but post queries about bugs in the code to the Ass2 Bug Fixes page.
I've finally finished a reasonably complete version of the assignment. I won't be changing the supplied code, unless you find bugs in it. I'll add a few more details to the spec after Friday, but there's already enough for you to get started, especially reading the supplied code to see what's available. I'll talk about the assignment more in the lecture on Monday (May 2).
Quiz #4 is now available for your quizzing pleasure. It's due before midnight Sunday 1 May.
I'm still working on the infrastructure for Assignment 2. I hope to have it done by Wednesday evening.
I finally finished the report I was writing last week and have now set up Quiz 3. You need to complete it before midnight on Friday 22 April.
I've set up a poll to check whether I'm covering the material too fast or too slow in lectures. Please give me feedback before Friday midnight. Depending on the results, I'll adjust the delivery speed.
I discovered tonight that the submission system (Give/SMS) doesn't like the group names that you used in WebCMS. I had to go through and rename all the groups by hand in SMS and in the submission directories. During this process, there were times when the submission info may have been messed up. None of the submission info was lost. I've now finished this process. It's possible that I'll also need to change the group names in WebCMS before everything will display properly. Could you let know if WebCMS is still not showing your submission data properly (after 12:15am on Thursday)?
I must be having a bad day ... :-(
It seems that I set the wrong "correct" answer for Question 1 in Quiz 2, so many people were marked as incorrect for that question, when they actually got it correct (and, conversely, some people who worked out the wrong answer were marked as "correct").
Webcms3 doesn't make it easy to fix up mistakes like this from the interface, so I will have to go through the database and manually correct things and then reload the marks into SMS (the system where the marks are stored).
This will take a while, but
will eventually all be
is now
sorted out. People who scored 2/3 (based on their Q1 answer) will now score 3/3. People who were incorrectly awarded 3/3 (based on Q1) will now score 2/3.
Now fixed. And I have a brand new script to fix this problem in the unlikely event that it occurs in future. Marks should be updated in SMS by the end of Saturday.
I've added some extra testing resources for assignment 1, as mentioned in the lecture yesterday.
A reminder: this Monday's lecture (i.e. Monday 21 March) will start at 4pm not 3pm. It will finish at 6pm as usual.
I will stay around after the lecture for a short while to help people who still haven't got their PostgreSQL server running. If you can't stay around and you need help, there are always my consultation times (Tue 3-4, Wed 2-3 in K17-410).
I've added the Assignment 1 specification to the web site. It is due on or before midnight Friday 8th April.
Note that submission is not yet enabled.
There are also new Pracs (some of which would be useful to do before starting the assignment) and Exercises.
Six hours to go and only half of you have attempted the Quiz. Don't forget that you must submit it before midnight tonight (Friday 11 March) if you want any marks for it. Sorry for spamming those who've done it already.
The system support people have told me that Grieg is struggling under the load of people compiling and running PostgreSQL servers.
The only reason why you must use Grieg is to create your /srvr/ YOU directory. Once that's done, you can actually do everything else on any CSE workstation, including compiling and running the PostgreSQL server. If you're running your server on a machine other than Grieg, you're strongly advised to put your PGDATA directory in /tmp , as described in Prac Exercise P01.
Also, please do NOT leave your PostgreSQL server running on any machine when you're not using the server. Shut the server down with pg_ctl stop before you finish your login session on the machine running the server. This includes Grieg.
Please create your Assignment groups as soon as possible (and before Friday 11 March at the latest). Groups can be of size 2 (preferably) or 1 (if you insist). You form groups via the "Groups" link in the sidebar.
To help you find partners to work on the assignment with, I've added a "Group Matchmaking" page, where the aim is for you to post requests/responses for partners in the Comments section of that page. If you want a partner, please check there.
Reminder: Quiz 1 is now available under "Activities". It must be completed before 11:59pm on Friday 11 March.
I've posted the first two Prac Work exercises. You should attempt them this week (Week 2). It would be useful to do them in the same pairs that you're going to use for Assignment 1. You can form pairs on the Groups page.
Welcome to COMP9315 16s1! This course examines the algorithms and data structures involved in the implementation of database management systems (DBMSs). We do this by discussing the principles behind the structures and looking at the details of their implementation in the open source PostgreSQL DBMS. The course assumes that you already understand relational databases from the programmer's perspective (.e. you can design relational schemas, write SQL queries on them, etc.). It also assumes that you have a solid background in C programming, since PostgreSQL is written entirely in C.
It would be useful to read the Course Outline before the first lecture. Detailed notes on each topic will be available before the lecture(s) on that topic. Lecture slides will be available after the lecture, along with videos of the lecture. The slides contain no material that's not in the notes, but summarise it and provide examples and exercises to do in the lecture. There are no tutorials or scheduled lab classes in this course, but there are plenty of theory and practical exercises for you to work through when it's convenient for you.