No.

CILOs

Weighting
(if applicable)

1.

write SQL queries to retrieve information from a database proficiently;
 

2.

identify and perform the steps involved in the design of a database;
 

3.

implement and critique the design in a relational database management system;
 

4.

describe the principles of transactions and concurrency control.
 

CILO No

TLAs

Hours/week
(if applicable)

CILO 1, 2
and 4

Lecture: The instructor will explain the course material in detail. Lectures support ILOs 1, 2, and 4.
 

CILO 2
and 4

Assignment: Each student is required to independently work on 2-3 assignments.  Each assignment contains several questions designed to help students consolidate the concepts/algorithms learned.  This learning method supports ILOs 2 and 4.
 

CILO 1

Hands-on practice: The instructor will arrange tutorials in labs where each student can practice database operations on actual database management systems (e.g., Oracle).  This learning method supports ILO 1.
 

CILO 2
and 3

Project: Each student is required to complete and implement a database design for a concrete application. In such a project, a student needs to draw the ER diagrams for the application, convert the diagrams to relational tables, perform the necessary normalization, and implement the final tables in a database management system.  This learning method supports ILOs 2 and 3.
 

CILO No

Type of assessment tasks/activities

Weighting
(if applicable)

Remarks

CILO 1

Write SQL queries to extract information from a database proficiently.
Coursework: Students may be required to finish several designated SQL tasks in some lab sessions, or may be tested on SQL during in-class tests.
Exam: Students will be given a practical scenario including a set of table schemas. They will be asked to write SQL queries to retrieve tuples satisfying various predicates. They may also be given some SQL queries, and requested to explain in English what kind of tuples are extracted by each query.
  

CILO 2

Identify and perform the steps involved in the design of a database.
Coursework: Students’ ability of designing a database will be evaluated by the quality of her/his design in the project.
Exam: Students will be given an un-normalized table and a set of functional dependencies, and are required to decompose the table into normalized relations in BCNF/3NF.  They may also be requested to create an ER-diagram that reasonably models a certain scenario, and to convert the diagram into relational tables.
  

CILO 3

Implement and critique the design in a relational database management system.
Coursework: This objective will also be assessed through the project.  In particular, students are expected to capture all the integrity constraints specified in the project. Furthermore, students should be able to judge if an implementation of the design is efficient, i.e., whether it incurs low  update/query overhead or not.
  

CILO 4

Understand the principles of transactions and concurrency control.
Exam: Students will be given several threads, and required to work out a schedule of executing the operations in these threads according to a concurrency control protocol.