COMP9315 Notices

Final Marks and WDs

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 04 June 2020, 04:25:32 PM, last modified Thursday 04 June 2020, 04:26:33 PM.

Your exam marks should now be visible.

I'll leave it for you to work out what ass1+ass2+quizzes+exam represents.

Some people received email today about exam collusion who shouldn't have. We examined quite a few potential cases, and some were ultimately deemed "No problem", but their zIDs might have been left in the list of people who may have colluded. Such people probably received an SY already, rather than a WD. Their marks don't change.

It may take a day or two for WDs to be converted to real grades in MyUNSW.

If you did collude in the final exam and "got away with it", think carefully before trying it again.

That's it from me for COMP9315 20T1. Enjoy 20T2.

Final Grades

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 21 May 2020, 08:13:45 PM.

It seems that final grades are already available. As per Faculty requirements, the grades are SY (if you passed), NF (if you didn't pass), and WC (if you have been awarded a Supp Exam).

Some people received a WD grade. This is because, as we were marking the exams, we noticed that some of their answers were very similar to answers submitted by another student. This suggests some form of collusion in completing the final exam. This requires further investigation to determine whether some kind of penalty is warranted.

I draw your attention to the text at the top of the exam information sheet:

I acknowledge that all of the work I submit for this exam
will be completed by me without assistance from anyone else.

Warning: We will be running plagiarism-checking on your submissions.
Plagiarism, especially in exams, will be prosecuted as Student Misconduct.

Your answers have been passed to the School Ethics Officer, Michael Thielscher, who will be contacting you shortly for an explanation of the similarity.

Polls on Exam

Posted by John Shepherd Friday 08 May 2020, 10:10:05 AM.

Given that this was a novel way to run an exam, I'm interested in feedback. I've made a couple of Polls, but I'm also interested if you want to send me email about the process.

Exam Updates

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 07 May 2020, 10:52:14 AM, last modified Friday 08 May 2020, 12:38:24 AM.

Any clarifications/changes to the Final Exam will be noted here (in reverse chronological order)

12:35am ... jas signing out ... and make sure everything is submitted before 1:00am ... I won't mark anything that's submitted after that

5:50pm ... we're 5 hours into what should be 3 hour exam ... only 27 people (10% of the class) have submitted all 8 questions ... I guess you're lucky it wasn't a 3-hour exam in the labs

3:40pm ... Q2 literally says "write buffer out if dirty" ... what it means in the context of this question is what I said below: increment the nwrites counter ... there are no pages to literally be written; it's a simulation

2:50pm ... Q2 says that you should increment the nwrites counter when a dirty page is replaced ... you should implement this, despite this particular simulation not testing for it ... if I were to change the main program and test your buffer pool, I'd expect it to work with writes ... it's only one line of code

12:05pm ... Q2: we forgot to initialise the clock field in the initBufPool() function ... add

newPool->clock = 0;

in initBufPool()

10:50am ... exam opened

Final Exam Now Available

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 07 May 2020, 10:49:43 AM.

The Final Exam is now up.

Start at the Instructions Page .

Final Exam Info

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 05 May 2020, 03:43:46 PM.

On Thursday (May 7), the final exam materials will become available around 11am AEST. You submit your answers using give (either in the command-line or via Webcms3). I will not look at answers that were submitted after 1am AEST (Fri 8 May).

If you have questions during the exam, email cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au. It may take 15-20 minutes to get an answer (depending on how fast the mail system is running). In the meantime, work on some other question.

If an email query indicates that a question needs to be changed, I will do it on the copy on the question paper on the CSE web server and post a correction/clarification to the COMP9315 Webcms3 Noticeboard, with email sent to all students (once again, expect a 10-15 minute delay).

The final exam paper will be accessible via:

https://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs9315/20T1/exams/final/index.html

(obviously this URL won't work yet)

The submission pages will be accessible on Webcms3 via:

https://webcms3.cse.unsw.edu.au/COMP9315/20T1/resources/43956

(obviously, there's nothing there just yet)

Sample Exam Sample Solutions

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 03 May 2020, 11:37:03 PM.

Sample solutions for the Sample Exam are now available.

A note on how I mark exams: one question at a time; the first thing I do is look at solutions by the best students in the course; if they're consistent and different to my sample solution, I re-check and get a correct solution before marking all of the submissions for that question.

Course Evaluation and Development

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 27 April 2020, 03:50:37 PM, last modified Monday 27 April 2020, 04:00:24 PM.

Please fill out the MyExperience surveys accessible via myexperience.unsw.edu.au . (If that link doesn't work, you should be able to get in via Moodle )

I'm particularly interested in feedback on how we can do things better online, since we're stuck with totally online offerings for at least 20T2 and maybe beyond.

The surveys close this Friday (May 1st), so don't delay.

Lectures are Done

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 26 April 2020, 09:40:49 PM.

I've now finished all of the COMP9315 lecture videos and uploaded them to both YouTube and Echo360. (The last few Echo360 videos are still processing)

There are 5 lectures for Week 10. The topics are visible on the Webcms3 Lectures > Week10 page.

Week 10 Lectures 2 and 3 are optional (read: not examinable), but may be interesting.

There are a number of other lecture slides that are non-examinable (not many), but I'll identify those in a later Notice.

Reminder: please look at the exam setup, which is available as the Sample Exam. Try to solve the questions (to get a feel for how long things take). Try to check . Try to submit your answers. Let me know if anything doesn't work or is unclear. I won't be looking at answers submitted for the Sample Exam.

Week 10

Posted by John Shepherd Friday 24 April 2020, 08:25:42 AM.

Thd critical lecture videos and slides for Week 10 are now available. I'll make more videos soon, but they cover optional (non-examinable) content.

Don't forget Quiz 5, which is due Friday (today) before 11:59pm.

Sample Exam

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 21 April 2020, 05:03:45 PM.

I've added a Sample Exam (under the Exams link), which shows how I plan to organise the Final Exam.

You can work on the exam either on your workstation/laptop at home or by logging in to a CSE server either via putty or via VLab .

You will need a web browser (any browser should work) and a Terminal window to type your answers.

Let me know if anything in the instructions is unclear or anything doesn't work.

Answers need to submitted via give or Webcms3 . You should practice submitting to prepare for the Final Exam, but I won't be looking at any submissions.

Exam Time Zone

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 21 April 2020, 01:57:54 PM.

I've made a new poll for people to suggest the best time range for taking the COMP9315 exam.

The exam is on Thursday 7th May.

Please respond before 23:59 on Friday 24th April.

Ass2 Testing Resources Update

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Monday 20 April 2020, 01:42:32 AM.

There was a problem with quoting strings in the run_test.sh script from the ass2 testing resources.

The tar file has been updated to fix the issue.

Sorry to everybody who was getting incorrect bit-strings.

Thanks to James Nakoda Nugraha for pointing out the issue (twice).

Ass2 Testing Resources

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 19 April 2020, 11:47:20 PM.

Dylan has done a splendid job developing a substantial test suite for Assignment 2.

Since this uses pre-generated data files, there should be less (no?) problems with random number generator differences.

Asking Questions on your Ass2 Code

Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 18 April 2020, 04:57:19 PM.

If you want us to look at your Ass2 code and make suggestions about what you've done wrong, please send us *all* of your modified files i.e. send us what you'd submit in your ass2.tar. Sending us just one or two files makes it too difficult to replicate your observations.

Missing bits in your codewords?

Posted by John Shepherd Friday 17 April 2020, 09:50:09 PM.

If you're having problems with some codewords having less bits than they should, take a look at this forum post (part way down).

Assignment 1 Sample Solution

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Wednesday 15 April 2020, 08:31:28 PM.

A sample solution for assignment 1 is now available here

Network Performance Issues from China

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 14 April 2020, 10:29:07 PM, last modified Friday 17 April 2020, 09:48:23 PM.

Are you taking COMP9315 from China? Are you having network performance issues? UNSW IT thinks it might have software product that could help. If you're interested in testing it, please send me email.

Update : Thanks to those who responded. UNSW IT had a limited number of copies available, and have used them all up. Hopefully, the people who test the software will find that it fixes network problems, and UNSW IT will make it more widely available.

Assignment 2 Updates

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Monday 13 April 2020, 10:08:05 PM, last modified Thursday 16 April 2020, 10:16:30 PM.

To fall in line with the information given in the course introduction slides, The early bonus has been adjusted to:

1 extra mark will be awarded from now until 23:59:59 Tuesday April 21th.

Then reduced by 0.014 marks per hour until 23:59:59 Friday April 24th.

To help check for bugs before full testing resources are available you can download a zip here

` $ unzip /web/cs9315/20T1/assignments/ass2/ass2.sanity_check.zip` at CSE

You will get 3 files.

• R.in - data generated with ` $ ./gendata 10000 6 1234567`
• sanity_check.sh - a script that runs the same commands as the final example in the spec
• R.out - the results of sanity_check.sh when run on the sample solution

In your assignment directory unzip then run:

$ make clean
$ make -B all
$ ./sanity_check.sh > my.out
$ diff -s R.out my.out

Assignment 2 Groups

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Monday 13 April 2020, 02:57:54 PM.

Assignment 2 Groups have been created, use ' $ 9315 classrun -check ass2' to view your group ID listed under the name "Submission ID" field.

For assignment 1 group IDs had the format "gXXX", but for assignment 2 group IDs are numerical. make sure that you and your group member have the same number in the 'Submission ID' field.

Email the course account at cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au if you find a problem with your group ID.

please CC your other group member and provide both members zIDs in the email.

When you use ` $ give cs9315 ass2 ass2.tar` some tests will be run to verify the contents of your ass2.tar file.

Submitting with WebCMS will also run these checks but a submission will be made even if the checks fail, make sure you read the output after you make your submission.

If you believe there is an error in this verification please let us know ASAP on the course forums.

Only ONE member of a group needs to submit ass2; only the last submission will be marked; only the last submission will be kept: each group member can overwrite the other's submission.

The problem from ass1 should be resolved: both group members should be able to check and collect after one member has submitted.

An early bonus is in place for ass2: 1 extra mark will be awarded from now until 8 am Monday April 20th and then reduced by 0.01 marks per hour until midday Friday April 24th.

Queries on Assignment 1 Marks

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 09 April 2020, 01:40:15 PM.

Please send queries about Assignment 1 marking to cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au, not to jas@cse.

Assignment 2 Groups & Assignment 1 Marking

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Tuesday 07 April 2020, 04:19:39 PM, last modified Tuesday 07 April 2020, 04:47:47 PM.

If you haven't done so already, and wish to form a different group than assignment 1, please create a group of the type "Assignment 2 Group" before midnight Saturday 11th.

All assignment 1 groups will be copied and then assignment 2 groups will be added over the top. If you are creating a new group for assignment 2, be kind, inform your partner for assignment 1.

Submission for assignment 2 will be set up by Monday 13th, and testing resource will be available soon; no later than a week before the deadline.

Assignment 1 marking is almost complete, and marks will be available by the end of tomorrow.

Quiz 4, Q2

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 07 April 2020, 03:49:42 PM.

It seems that the B-tree in Q2 of the quiz is a bit of a debacle. Its construction doesn't seem to have followed any known B-tree insertion algorithm, and not even the one implied in the question.

I'll discount that question from the marking. So, Q4 is now marked out of 3.

Assignment 2 Groups

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 02 April 2020, 11:24:56 PM.

Please form your groups (1 or 2 members) for Assignment 2.

Go to the "Groups" page, click on [+Create], enter a name for the group (keep it simple), select "Assignment 2 Group" (NOT "Default"), then press [+Create].

If you have a partner, [Edit] the group and add them by name or zID.

Please do this ASAP. We can't set up assignment submissions until we have all the groups.

The "Group Matchmaking" page is still there if you need a new partner.

Final Assessment Strategy

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 30 March 2020, 06:44:01 PM, last modified Tuesday 31 March 2020, 09:34:42 AM.

Since UNSW couldn't take a decisive position, I plan to give marks+grades for COMP9315.

!$@%!$@$!! Now the Faculty plans to post its own position ... sometime. So ... keep waiting.

Despite my whinging, the Faculty has now decreed that all non-project/non-thesis courses must award SY/FL grades for their final result. This will result in all of the kinds of problems that you have already pointed out (WAM, articulation, etc.). I'm sure these can be resolved, but probably with a lot more effort/nuisance than would have been required if we had stuck with mark+grade.

So, on your transcript you will see SY (if you Fail, nothing appears on your transcript). However, I will make your final mark available via Webcms3.

The exam will still be run as I described a few Notices ago.

Week 07 Lecture Videos

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 30 March 2020, 11:52:14 AM.

Videos will be available on YouTube and Echo360 later tonight. I can't make them now because someone is using a concrete saw right outside my house. One of the downsides of working from home ...

Assignment 2

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 29 March 2020, 06:25:15 PM, last modified Sunday 29 March 2020, 06:35:23 PM.

The Assignment 2 specification is now available. The spec is long, so its worth starting to read it now.

This assignment covers superimposed codeword SIMC) indexing, which we haven't yet covered in lectures. We'll do so this week. And I'll make an extra video on the assignment.

I critically forgot to mention that SIMC is covered in the Courses Notes, part E, starting at slide 109.

And, as always, let me know if anything is unclear or ambiguous in the spec.

Final Exam

Posted by John Shepherd Friday 27 March 2020, 07:53:54 AM, last modified Friday 27 March 2020, 07:56:36 AM.

Yes, COMP9315 still has a final exam worth 60% of the overall mark.

You do the exam on your own machine at home.

You can answer the questions either

• on your own machine
• on the CSE servers via putty
• on the CSE servers via VLab

What you need in order to complete the exam

• a C compiler
• a text editor
• a modest internet connection (e.g. able to access Webcms3)

The format of the exam will be similar to the 14s2 exam under the Past Exams link, ie. a C programming question or two, and questions requiring analysis of supplied scenarios.

Differences between the 20T1 exam and the 14s2 exam:

• different questions (doh)
• you submit your answers via Give
• you have 12 hours to complete the exam

We don't have an exam timetable yet, so I can't tell you what day.

I will put up an sample of what the exam will look like next week.

Ask any questions on the Q and A forum.

Poll on Final Marks/Grades

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 26 March 2020, 10:20:33 PM.

Yet another poll . The previous two polls were very useful in helping me decide how to run the Final Exam (e.g. VLab will not be used). Thanks for your responses.

Quiz 3

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 26 March 2020, 07:57:27 AM, last modified Thursday 26 March 2020, 08:03:28 AM.

Some people have raised concerns about ambiguity in Q1 and Q2 in Quiz 3. I have tweaked the wording of these question to (hopefully) remove the ambiguity. If the new wording changes your answer to either of these questions, please resubmit the quiz.

Lecture Videos

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 23 March 2020, 07:30:29 PM, last modified Tuesday 24 March 2020, 09:41:19 PM.

I'll continue to make lecture videos available via both YouTube and Echo360. The videos in Echo360 from week 07 on will be the same as the YouTube videos. They will be recorded on my laptop somewhere other than Mathews B (e.g. my study at home, possibly with piano accompaniment). UNSW has decided to cancel scheduled recordings in theatres, presumably as a precursor to shutting down the campus.

Update : the new videos that I'm uploading into Echo360 appear at the bottom of the list. The March 24 2020 video part-way down contains nothing. The real March 24 videos are labelled Week 06 Lecture #3 and Week 06 Lecture #4. This is the labelling scheme I'll be using from now on. And, of course, the week 6 videos are also on YouTube, accessible from Lectures > Week 6.

CSE Sturep Survey

Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 21 March 2020, 03:37:20 PM.

The CSE Student Reps have put together a survey to get student feedback on what we should do for assessment for the rest of term:

https://web.cse.unsw.edu.au/~apps/prismatic

Feedback is needed by the Faculty by Monday, so please give us your suggestions ASAP. Thanks, jas

Testing The Box and Vlab

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 19 March 2020, 10:05:54 PM, last modified Thursday 19 March 2020, 10:07:57 PM.

UNSW has a media streaming service called The Box. You can upload videos there via a Media Gallery in Moodle. Since you can't upload videos to Echo360, I might need to upload future lecture videos to The Box if the campus is locked down (but I will also continue to upload to YouTube).

The Media Gallery is behind the "Lecture Videos for Weeks 6-10" link on the Moodle Page for the course .

I just put some videos from Week 5 there. I'd like people (especially if not in Sydney) to see if they can access the videos via the course Moodle page, and let me know via the Poll whether it all works ok.

Also, could everyone check that they can access the CSE servers via VLab, and fill in the second poll .

The easiest (but not most efficient) way to use VLab is via a web browser. It is better to use a VNC client like TigerVNC.

Thanks, jas

March 19 Consultation

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 19 March 2020, 01:03:51 PM.

Stick with Collaborate ... https://au.bbcollab.com/collab/ui/session/join/e05...

Everything Online

Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 18 March 2020, 11:54:12 AM.

Since we're being strongly encouraged to stay away from the campus, all of the consultations will be moving online, initially using Blackboard Collaborate.

You can access the session for this afternoon's (March 18, 1-3pm EST) consultation either via the course Moodle site

https://moodle.telt.unsw.edu.au/course/view.php?id=48588

or (maybe) directly via Blackboard Collaborate

https://au.bbcollab.com/guest/b236d54bc7844f7bbcdbdd479f0ecd6d

If this doesn't work well (and let me know if you have problems), there are other options for online meetings.

Assignment 1 Testing Script Update

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Tuesday 17 March 2020, 10:43:00 PM.

As of 10:00 pm 17 March, the testing script for assignment 1 has been updated.

This was done to alleviate some of the stress that is being put on grieg

To clean-up anything left by the previous version and to get the new script please run the following

$ ssh grieg
$ cd /srvr/$USER/
$ mv testing/pname.c testing/pname.source .
$ rm -rf testing
$ tar -xf /web/cs9315/20T1/assignments/ass1/testing/testing.tar
$ mv pname.c pname.source testing/.
$ find /tmp -maxdepth 1 -type d -user `whoami` -iname 'tmp*' -exec rm -rf {} \;
$ killall --user=`whoami` -Ir '.*postgres.*'

$ cd testing
$ ./run_test.py

If you are working from home you can download the .tar file from the this link

There are still known bugs with the testing script as reported on the forums and solutions are being worked on.

COVID-forced Changes to COMP9315

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 16 March 2020, 11:22:37 PM.

Based on today's announcement from the VC, COMP9315 will be changing as follows:

Lectures:

• will continue at the same times and same venue, students or no students
• if the campus is locked-down, I will make lecture videos at home
• either way, there will be videos for all remaining lectures

Consultations:

• I'll continue to run consultations in my office; if you feel sick, don't come
• if the campus is locked-down, then consultations will all move online
• in the meantime, I will run some consultations online anyway (details to follow)
• use the forum in place of cosnultations where possible ( but debugging is difficult via the forum)

Assignments:

• continue as normal

Final Exam:

• I said earlier that there would be no off-campus exams
• given how things are developing, the exam will now be held online via your home computer
• you will need to use the standard exam environment via VLab from home
• I will make a sample/practice exam available in Week 9, so we can sort out technical issues

Assignment Groups (again)

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 15 March 2020, 12:18:44 PM.

Could everyone who's working in a pair on the assignment please check that their group is registered correctly?

To do this, click on the graph icon down the bottom of the Webcms3 sidebar menu (next to your name). This gives you a list of your marks (mostly empty at the moment) and also give you a group number (looks like g123). If you and your partner do not have the same number, then you're not currently registered as being in the same group and should let cs9315@cse.unsw.edu.au know ASAP.

Of course, you need to be logged in to Webcms3 for this to work.

Week 5 Consultations

Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 14 March 2020, 11:29:37 AM.

Consultations in Week 5 ... Wed 1-3, Thu 1-2

Assignment 1 Submissions

Posted by Dylan Brotherston 🕴️ Thursday 12 March 2020, 11:03:11 PM.

There appear to be issues with viewing assignment 1 submissions.

But submissions are being processed correctly: files and timestamps are being collected.

Only one group member needs to submit (both can submit if they want to), the last submission from either group member will be marked.

If you are working in a pair for assignment 1 and have not created a group with the " Assignment 1 Group " group type yet, do so ASAP.

Assignment Groups

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 12 March 2020, 12:54:49 PM.

I've finally loaded all the groups into the SMS database, and they will appear as assGroup when you check your marks.

If you're in a pair, could you let me know if both members do not have the same assGroup value.

When you submit your assignment, it should be stored under the group name, so only one member of the group needs to submit the assignment.

Final Exams for "remote" Students

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 12 March 2020, 11:27:01 AM.

While I'm talking about the future of (your enrolment in) the course, here's the plan for Final Exams...

The current strategy is (in order of preference)

• take the Final Exam in the May 4-15 exam period
• take the Supp exam in the week May 25-30
• take a special exam during 20T2 (preferably early in 20T2)

Of course, all this is tentative because we don't know how long travel bans will last, etc.

Under no circumstances will we be offering to sit exams not on the UNSW Kensington campus.

Census Date

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 12 March 2020, 10:30:18 AM.

Reminder: The Census date is rapidly approaching (March 15). If you're thinking of dropping this course, do it now. If you're still enrolled after the Census date, you have to pay for the course, even if you don't complete it.

Assignment 1 Error Message

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 09 March 2020, 06:26:10 PM.

I forgot to specify what pname_in() should print if the input name does not follow the grammar.

Copy what the built-in data types do, e.g.

ERROR: invalid input syntax for type PersonName: "Prince"

Try to match the above exactly (same words, same case, same number of spaces).

Wednesday's consultation

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 09 March 2020, 04:25:58 PM.

This would normally be 2-4, but I've got a meeting from 3-4, so I'll run the consult in 2x1-hour blocks (2-3 and 4-5) in K17-410. Don't turn up at 2:55 and expect help; I'll have to leave for the meeting around 2:56.

Assignment 1 Testing Resources

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 08 March 2020, 05:52:19 PM.

The testing resources for Assignment 1 are now available.

Let us know ASAP if there are any problems.

Quiz 2

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 08 March 2020, 12:54:40 PM.

Quiz 2 is now available. It is due before midnight this Friday (13 March).

An older version of Quiz 2 "leaked" before midday Sunday. Three people completed the older version and will have to re-do the Quiz fo complete the new version.

Finalise Groups NOW

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 05 March 2020, 04:08:22 PM.

If you haven't sorted out an Assignment 1 Group in Webcms3, please do so ASAP.

We base assignment submission and assessment on these groups. If you're not in a group, you may not be able to submit the assignment.

If you can't find a partner, make a group of size 1.

We'll be "harvesting" the group information over the weekend and using it to set up assignment submission, so make sure your group is registered by Saturday(March 7) morning.

PostgreSQL on Grieg

Posted by John Shepherd Saturday 29 February 2020, 05:53:33 PM.

I wish I'd never mentioned using PostgreSQL on CSE machines other than Grieg.

Please do all your PostgreSQL work on the CSE machines on Grieg .

Which means, before doing anything, run the command ssh grieg in a terminal window.

If you've installed PostgreSQL at home, fine, but remember to test your work on Grieg before submitting.

Assignment 1 (Draft)

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 27 February 2020, 11:41:27 PM, last modified Saturday 29 February 2020, 04:24:26 PM.

I've just posted what I think is a final draft of Assignment 1 . If you spot any glaring errors (especially references to Email types/values), let me know.

Update : based on feedback (thank you), I've modified the Assignment 1 specification.

I'll post some testing resources tomorrow. And I'll sort out submission soon after that.

ASAP your individual details or pair details into Webcms3 Groups , as an "Assignment 1 Group".

Getting a /srvr/zNNNNNNN/ directory.

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 27 February 2020, 02:15:13 PM, last modified Thursday 27 February 2020, 02:15:45 PM.

So that I don't need to answer this question again ...

You will not have a /srvr/zNNNNNNN/ directory until you login to Grieg and run the command

priv srvr

This command creates the /srvr/zNNNNNNN/ directory, if it's not already there. You only need to run it once.

Quiz 1 due tomorrow

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 27 February 2020, 10:46:14 AM.

Reminder: Quiz 1 is due on Friday 28 February before midnight. Only half the class have done it so far. Don't miss out on a couple of marks by forgetting to do it.

Still Away, Still Ill

Posted by John Shepherd Wednesday 26 February 2020, 04:50:34 PM.

I may have suggested at some point that I might be back at work on Thursday (27 Feb) and might run a consultation then. Given how I feel today (bluuurgh) , I'll also rest at home on Thursday and Friday, and hopefully bounce back for the Monday lecture next week.

Reminder: No Lectures in Week 2

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 24 February 2020, 09:47:14 AM.

The two lectures this week have been cancelled

• Monday 24 Feb 12-2
• Tuesday 25 Feb 2-4

Don't make the mistake of being the only person sitting in Matthews B and wondering where everybody else is.

Quiz 1

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 23 February 2020, 03:14:36 PM.

It seems that Quiz 1 was already visible. I was going to modify it for this term, but since a bunch of people have already done it, we may as well stick with the one that's there. It's still relevant.

No Lectures in Week 2

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 23 February 2020, 11:22:17 AM.

After a medical incident on Friday night, I have been advised to rest for the next few days, so I won't be attending Uni or taking lectures.

Since we had week 6 as a no-lecture week, I'll reschedule by moving the no-lecture week to week 2, weeks 2-5 move one week later (i.e. become weeks 3-6), and other weeks continue as before.

However, rest at home doesn't prevent me from releasing quizzes or assignments, so expect Quiz 1 and Assignment 1 to be out soon.

Local/Distance? Poll

Posted by John Shepherd Thursday 20 February 2020, 02:49:18 PM, last modified Thursday 20 February 2020, 02:50:10 PM.

I have a list of 159 COMP9315 students who are (allegedly) not currently in Sydney. This seems high. I would like to find out who is really here. If you think you can make it to Sydney by March 2, treat the poll as if you are already in Sydney. Please fill out this poll , so I have some idea who's here and who's not. Thanks, jas

Buggy postgresql.conf Files

Posted by John Shepherd Tuesday 18 February 2020, 07:05:29 PM.

A few people have reported that they can't start their servers after installing, and the error is a problem on line 1 of the postgresql.conf file. One person sent me postgresql.conf file and I found an invisible Unicode character at the start of the file. I'm assuming that they modified the file with some fancy editor. For anyone who has this problem, get a new copy of postgresql.conf (e.g. remove the $PGDATA/pgsql directory and re-run initdb ) and then make the required changes using a simple editor like vi or nano .

Prac Exercise P01

Posted by John Shepherd Monday 17 February 2020, 11:27:10 PM, last modified Tuesday 18 February 2020, 10:07:56 AM.

Since people have started trying to install PostgreSQL servers, I've updated Prac Exercise P01 under the "Prac Exercises" link. Work your way through that to install your server. If you're still having problems (and I have installed PostgreSQL on both my Mac and on Grieg without difficulty), I'll run a special "install-fest" later in the week to resolve all of the problems.

Update : Come to my office K17-410 between 2-4 on Wednesday 19 Feb for help in installing PostgreSQL.

Course Intro Videos

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 16 February 2020, 10:59:42 PM.

I've put up a couple of videos under the Lectures link.

One is a Course Introduction; the other is a quick review of relational DBMSs.

It would be useful to watch them before Monday's first lecture.

Welcome to COMP9315 20T1

Posted by John Shepherd Sunday 09 February 2020, 06:36:57 PM.

Welcome to COMP9315, where you'll learn how DBMSs work internally ... or at least learn some of the techniques, given that DBMSs are large, complex systems which would take more than 9 weeks to cover in detail.

I've just posted the Course Outline. Please read it .

Any active links on the site will probably take you to 19T2 material. 20T1 will be similar, but not quite the same (e.g. PostgreSQL v12, rather than v11).

If you're trapped in China (corona virus), you can probably do the course remotely except for the final exam .