Data Management (academic year 2012/2013)



For whom is this course. This 6 credits course is for the students of the Master of Science in Engineering of Computer Science (School of Engineering) of the Sapienza Università di Roma. The language for both the course and the exam is English. The lectures will be held in the first semester (October 2012 - December 2012).
Prerequisites. A good knowledge of the fundamentals of Programming Structures (algorithms and data structures), Programming Languages, Databases (SQL, relational data model, Entity-Relationship data model, conceptual and logical database design), Theoretical Computer Science (computational complexity, computability) is required.
Course goals. The course presents the basic concepts of database systems, emphasizing the relational model. Several major issues related to the theory and the design of relational database systems are covered, including concurrency control, recovery, file and index organizations, query processing.


  • News
    • March 24, 2013 The exam of the April session (only for "fuori corso") will be held on April 8, 2013, at 8:30am in classroom 8, via Eudossiana 18.
  • Lecture material
    • M. Lenzerini, Lecture notes, Available in this site (see below)
    • R. Ramakrishnan, J. Gehrke. Database Management Systems. McGraw-Hill, 2004
  • Tutor
    • Lorenzo Lepore - office hours: Wednesday, 11:00am - 1:00pm, room B221, via Ariosto 25.
  • Lectures
    • When: Wednesday [15:45am -- 17:15am], Thursday [08:30am - 11:45am], from October 1, 2012 to December 20, 2012
    • Where: Classroom B2 "Marco Cadoli", via Ariosto 25, Roma
    • Schedule
  • Lecture notes (slides to download)
  • Exercises (slides to download)
  • Topics covered
    • 1. The structure of a Data Base Management System (DBMS)
    • 2. Concurrency management: The concept of transaction, The notion of serializability, Concurrency management strategies
    • 3. Recovery: Crash management, Classification of failures, Recovery strategies
    • 4. Physical structures for data bases: Record and page organizations, Simple file organizations, Index file organizations
    • 5. Query processing: Performance of file organizations, Evaluation of relational algebra operators
  • Exam
    • Final exam: the final exam is constituted by a written exam, and a possible oral examinations. Students have 2 hours for completing the written exam
    • Past written exams: you can have a look at the texts of past exams
    • To book for the exam: Please, follow the on-line booking procedure.
    • Schedule of final exams:
      • First written exam: January 31, 2013, 8:30am, classroom 33, via Eudossiana 18
      • Second written exam: February 22, 2013, 8:30am, classroom 33, via Eudossiana 18
      • Special exam session: April 2013
      • Third written exam: June 2013
      • Fourth written exam: July 2013
      • Fifth written exam: September 2013
      • Second special exam session: November 2013
  • Information on past editions of this course
  • Office hours. Tuesday, 5:00 pm, at the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica Automatica e Gestionale "Antonio Ruberti", via Ariosto 25, Roma, second floor, room B203 (if available), or room B217 (otherwise) -- please, look at the last minute news for the next office hours