MEDED 598A: DB & Applications in the Health Sciences (3 credits).
Mon & Wed, 3pm - 4:20pm. Fall, 2002.

Errr.... This page will be under construction thru-out the quarter. Sorry.

Technology:

The Instructional Lab (T-277) has MS Access, MySQL, and PostGreSQL installed as database servers. For use with MySQL, you will want to install the mySQL front-end (1 Meg freeware package for Windows). You may also want to refer to the MySQL on-line documentation, at least as a reference manual.

Of course, there is always MS Access. To help you work through the textbook examples, the author provides a copy of the PetStore example as a MS Access database. This includes a particular large set of example Queries -- remember, you can use "SQL view" to see the raw SQL code for any query.

For UML modeling, I am hoping to use Rational Rose (I am processing paperwork to get free educational-use copies). In the meantime, Poseidon (community edition) is a free-ware tool that allows you to create and browse UML diagrams (but no printing.) Perhaps even better, Microsoft Visio also has a UML mode (select "Software" and UML should appear as a possible template). Visio is installed in the Instructional Lab.

Week-by-week lecture schedule w/ Homework:

These will be designed as the quarter progresses. Watch this space for detailed specifications.

Date	Lecture topic(s)	Assignment Due	Readings Due
Sept 30	Intro; Database architectures & overview
Oct 2	UML & database design		Ch. 1, UML reading selection (Handout on Sept 30)
Oct 7	More DB design	Homework #1	Ch. 2
Oct 9	Normalization		Ch. 3: thru pp. 86
Oct 14	More normalization: Normalizing UML diagrams		Ch. 3: pp. 90-106
Oct 16	SQL	Homework #2	Ch. 4
Oct 21	more SQL: sub-queries & data creation queries		Ch. 5
Oct 23	SQL, OLAP, and exam review	Homework #3
Oct 28	Exam #1
Oct 30	Relational Algebra		Ch. 3 of Silberschatz pp. 89-111
Nov 4	Query optimization		Reading from Silberschatz: snippets of Ch. 13 & 14
Nov 6	Transactions & concurrency (Mel Oyler)		pp. 309-314 (Ch.7)
Nov 13	(class cancelled due to AMIA)
Nov 18	Physical organization of DB		Ch. 9, pp. 383-398
Nov 20	Distributed databases		Ch. 11
Nov 25	XML, DBs and XML query languages (Peter Mork)	Homework #4
Nov 27	(cancel: afternoon before Thanksgiving)
Dec 2	Object-Relational DBs		Ch. 12, pp. 490-497
Dec 4	Entity-Attribute-Value DBs (Bryant Karras)		Nadkarni handout
Dec 9	Exam #2	Homework #5 (due on Dec 10)
Dec 11	Review & "How to give a talk"
Dec 18	Final exam session: Student project presentations

Final project:
Suppose you have been given the job of selecting the best database design for a domain of your choice (hopefully something in biomedical informatics). In a short (15 mins) presentation, your task will be to given a detailed walk-thru of the key elements of two alternative database designs. You should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the two designs, and you may argue that one is superior to the other (or they might be equally good). Ideally, you would interview potential users to develop a set of use cases, and then you could demontrate how the two designs would support (or fail to support) the use cases. The two designs could either show the effect of arbitrary design decisions, or the effect of different overall approaches to database design. For example, you could compare a fully normalized design versus a non-normalized one, or you could compare a traditional relational database design versus an EAV database design.

This final project should be smallish -- about 2-3 weeks worth of work. Part of the point would be to develop your oral presentation skills. I will provide a set of tips and guidelines for oral presentations in class.

Final project deliverables: In addition to the oral presentation, you must hand in UML documentation for your two designs, as well as documents describing at least two use cases for applications that might use your database designs.