CSCI3354 · Computer Science
Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences
From EagleApps to e-commerce to the Motor Vehicle Registry and the IRS, databases are everywhere, essential to modern computing, but typically lie hidden in the background. This course brings databases into the foreground. It first introduces you to direct interactions with relational databases, casting you as power user. We then shift to the database engineers point of view: designing a convenient and efficient database to represent a body of real-world data. Finally, we look under the hood to get a sense of how database engines are built. Each of the three areas will have a set of programming assignments, including a simple Web interface for queries, a database schema and its realization, and a simple database engine of your own. You are not assumed to know SQL coming in, but you will need to know both Python and C, and some familiarity with HTML is helpful.
Course experience
Averages use the original five-point historical evaluation scale.
Organization
3.9 / 5
How well the course was organized
Challenge
4.4 / 5
How intellectually challenging students found it
Attendance
3.9 / 5
How necessary attendance was
Assignments
4.3 / 5
How helpful assignments were
Weekly effort
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hours per week
Estimated from the original workload response buckets. Individual sections may differ.
Instructor options
Ratings below reflect only recovered evaluations connected to this course.
Across time
Section-level results available in the recovered archive.
Spring 2025
1 section