After successful completion of the course, students are able to

• interpret concepts of ER- and EER- models as well as the relational data model and apply them in order to express given facts;
• abstract relevant concepts from a situation described in natural language, model them in ER- and EER- diagrams and derive relational schemas from such models;
• devise relational schemas (including mechanisms for guaranteeing given integrity constraints on the data) and to implement them in SQL on a relational database management system (RDBMS);
• assess and improve the quality of a relational schema;
• manipulate and query data stored under a relational schema using SQL;
• comprehend and independently formulate database queries in SQL, the Relational Algebra, and the Relational Calculus (this includes being able to formalize requests/queries given as natural language);
• develop and apply procedures in a procedural database programming language;
• evaluate properties of parallel transactions and to identify problems caused by parallel processing of transactions;
•  systematically apply different isolation levels;
• execute and understand the presented methods and concepts for recovery and concurrency control.

• Semantic Data Modelling; EER-diagrams
• The Relational Model (Basics, Translation using EER-diagrams)
• Relational Query Languages
• Relational Algebra
• Relational Calculus
• SQL
• Design Theory for Relational Databases (Functional Dependencies, Normalforms)
• Database programming (with pgSQL)
• SQL-extensions
• Transactions
• error handling / recovery
• concurrency control

• The topics of the course are presented during the lectures
• In the exercise part of the course, the application of the presented methods, concepts, and algorithms are trained.
• The exercise part consists of four exercise sheets, which are solved by the students as  a homework and handed in.
• Practicing the formulation of SQL queries is done in an online tool.
• Ahead of the deadlines, teaching assistants offer consultation hours.
• Three of the four exercises are checked by the teaching assistants and returned to the students (enhanced with some feedback)
• The correct solutions are presented by the lecturers and discussed with the audience in extra lectures.
• The fourth exercise is dicussed with a teaching assistant in a personal meeting. During the discussion the solutions will be checked for correctness, and even more the students understanding of the topic are evaluated and feedback is provided.

ECTS Breakdown:

 30h   lectures
 30h   preparation for and repetition of lectures
 52h   solving exercise sheets
  0,5h exercise interviews
 34h exam preparation
  3,5h   exam
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150h (= 25h * 6ECTS)

The final evaluation is based on the performance at the exercises (evaluation of the first three exercise sheets is based on the submission, evaluation of the foruth exercise sheet also heavily depends on the performance at the meeting with the Tutor), at the computer-based SQL-test, and two written exams.

There are no formal prerequisites for this course. However, it is strongly recommended to take the course "Formal Modelling" prior to this course.