Learning Partnerships, Unit Catalogue 2008/09 |
AS20107 Advanced database topics |
| Credits: 10 |
| Level: Intermediate |
| Academic Year at Cirencester College |
| Academic Year at City of Bath College |
| Academic Year at Weston College |
| Academic Year at Wiltshire College |
| Assessment: CW 75%, EX 25% |
| Requisites: |
| Before taking this unit you must take AS10098 |
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Aims:
* To equip the student with the necessary knowledge and skills to - Carry out database management tasks - Administer large database systems - Recommend appropriate strategies for implementing distributed databases * To provide an overview of the interface between object oriented technologies and databases, and the related problems * To provide a sound conceptual introduction to decision support and related topics. Learning Outcomes: At the completion of the unit, learners should be able to: * Create and administer databases using graphical managers and SQL DDL * Outline the practical concerns which led to the development of distributed architectures and the problems associated with such architectures * Describe and apply the concepts of fragmentation and replication * Appreciate the differences between object-oriented and object-relational databases and outline O-R facilities of industry-standard DBMS packages * Describe and use the methods and facilities associated with decision support systems * Outline the techniques available for data warehousing and data mining. Skills: Practical skills - database management skills, DDL - taught and assessed Personal skills - time management, personal organisation, working with others, independent research, problem solving - facilitated Communication skills - written reports; facilitated and assessed. Content: Create and administer databases using graphical managers and SQL DDL * Creation of databases, tables, columns, indexes and relationships; stored procedures; levels of security, granting and revoking of user privileges. Backup, recovery and tuning of databases. Outline the practical concerns which led to the development of distributed architectures and the problems associated with such architectures * Practical necessity for distributed data management. DDBMS models. Problems of consistency, security and integrity. Transaction management in the distributed environment. Top down and bottom up integration. Describe and apply the concepts of fragmentation and replication * Horizontal and vertical fragmentation. Degrees of replication. Application to given instances. Appreciate the differences between object-oriented and object-relational databases and outline O-R facilities of industry-standard DBMS packages. * Reprise of object oriented concepts. Persistent data. Methods, data types and inheritance in O-R databases. SQL O-R facilities. Describe and use the methods and facilities associated with decision support systems * Multidimensional data models. Cube, rollup and aggregation operations. Relational OLAP systems. Outline the techniques available for data warehousing and data mining * Definition of and characteristics of a data warehouse. Enterprise and virtual warehouses; data marts. * Integration and extraction considerations. Data mining. Hypotheses. The knowledge discovery process. The A-priori algorithm. |