“An introduction to the theory and design of database management systems. Topics covered include internals of database management systems, fundamental concepts in database theory, and database application design and development. In particular, logical design and conceptual modeling, physical database design strategies, relational data model and query languages, query optimization, transaction management and distributed databases. Typically there are hands-on assignments and/or a course project. Selected topics from the current database research literature may be touched upon as well.”
CS 534 involved learning all about database systems, including the theoretical parts such as the different models and how to represent them for different scenarios. The class also went over SQL and how to utilize the theory learned to do queries on a complicated database, the TCPH database. A final group project occurred, where I worked with a group of four to query the TCPH database, figuring out ways to better optimize it.