UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

CSC 290C - Intro to Database Systems

Resources

Revised:  2009-03-21

 

Here are some resources you may find useful when taking the CSC Intro to Database Systems course:



Email

All course email communication is done via the Google group urcs-db-intro-0809s. You do not need a Google account in order to be a member of the group - simply email me a request to be added to the group providing your full name and I'll take care of it. Once you are a member, you will receive all messages sent to the group, and you can sent messages yourself by addressing them to urcs-db-intro-0809s AT googlegroups.com.

There is a benefit to having a google account: it lets you log in to the web site associated with the group, which is http://groups.google.com/group/urcs-db-intro-0809s. One good reason to go there is to view the message archive, i.e. all messages that have been sent to the group since it was created.



Software

The software systems you will be using in this course, both for selected homework assignments and for the term project, are collectively referred to as "AMP":

You will need MySQL fairly soon, and the other two you will need in the later stages of your term project.

You can download and install Apache, MySQL and PHP individually, or you can download an AMP package which contains everything you need. AMP packages exist for various platforms. For instance, a popular package for the three primary platforms is XAMPP. (Look for XAMPP Lite if you want a minimalist configuration. See also this helpful tutorial.) For a comprehensive list of these packages, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMP_Packages

Note: if you develop on a Mac, you will want to use MAMP instead of XAMPP, especially because of its better integration with MySQL, and with the NetBeans IDE (Integrated Development Environment). See this MAMP configuration document for more details.

Since you are all upper-level CS or CS-like majors, I assume giving you the link where to obtain the software is sufficient, i.e., you know how to find and read documentation, and install and configure software. But if you do run into difficulties, feel free to discuss installation and configuration issues in the course mailing list.

A LAMP server (LAMP = Linux + AMP) will be made available shortly, which will be used to host the term project for each student. However, I strongly encourage you to install AMP on your own computer anyway so that you can experiment, modify and test files before "installing" them, etc. Note also that the Apache portion of the course LAMP server is accessible outside the University firewall (i.e., anybody will be able to view your web pages), but you will not have terminal access to the server (which you'll need to upload files and access the DBMS, hence you won't be able to develop and test) unless you are within the CS firewall. Finally, it will be good to have a working project system on your own pc, since the LAMP server will be decommisioned shortly after the end of the course.