CS 448Database Systems Implementation

67% liked it67% easy100% useful

From 6 ratings and 6 comments on UW Flow. The most helpful comments, quoted as written, without names. Read them all on UW Flow.

• The course is a mix of "how a database works internally", "distributed computing" and "tricks used in databases that are applicable elsewhere" topics.
  Last semester, it covered different ways databases store and index data, some algorithms used to efficiently do things like sorts and joins on large (possibly distributed) datasets, how SQL is optimized, how databases recover after crashing (and optimizations around that), transaction management, and different locking techniques to reduce lock contention on some data structures.
  Assignments involved making small changes to Postgres, which was not too hard, but very interesting.
  The course was much better than 348, eg. you only need to read…

  May 2018 · liked it · 4 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• Excellent course. Prof. Ihab Ilyas has a wealth of experience and knowledge about databases and cares deeply about educating his students. Every lecture of his was fascinating and insightful with plenty of examples and diagrams. He might talk about 20-years-old IBM technology and potential applications of neural networks to databases in the same lecture. He also brought in 2 alumni students of his who work at MemSQL and SAP, and they us about contemporary in-memory databases and recent advances in computer engineering. For assigned work we added features to PostgreSQL and used MongoDB's WiredTiger storage library. The assignments were straightforward and helped to reinforce what we learn in…

  Apr 2019 · liked it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• Not a very thorough course, though pretty interesting. It was neat adding features to PostgreSQL.

  Oct 2012 · liked it · 2 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• This course covers the internal workings of databases. Prof Ihab Ilyas is incredibly experienced and knowledgeable, and his lectures are captivating. Assignments consist of adding small features to Postgres, and are surprisingly straightforward considering their heavy weighting. Focus is on understanding core concepts over memorization; marking is very lenient, and the final is open book (the prof literally brought some textbooks).

  May 2019 · liked it · 1 found this helpfulOn UW FlowRemove this

• The material taught in the course is quite useful. The course covered a wide range of topics about databases, and I felt that I have a deep understanding of databases after taking this course. However, this course was taught in a way that was very disorganized and overly hard. The 3 assignments for the course was very heavy on the length of coding, had very vague descriptions that needed clarifications on piazza multiple times, and most importantly did not provide any starter code or test cases. The slides used for the course also did not provide clear answers to the material, some topics are phrased as questions, i.e. (Advantage of X vs Y?) without being given the answers in the slides at…

  Apr 2023 · didn’t like itOn UW FlowRemove this