Database Administration

Objectives

  • Explain the main performance, reliability, and scale challenges in data management systems.
  • Describe query processing and transactional mechanisms in database management systems.
  • Apply data management solutions that combine, compose, and configure data management mechanisms.
  • Assess the behavior of data management systems.

Program

  • Introduction: Anatomy of a database management system; characterization of target applications; identification of the main performance, reliability and scaling challenges.
  • Execution of queries: physical representation of data; relational operators and iterators; redundancy with indexes and views; planning and optimization of queries.
  • Transactional isolation and recovery: concurrency anomalies; locking and multi-version resolution; performance characteristics and optimization strategies; atomicity vs. durability; logging and checkpointing methods; backups.
  • Case studies: benchmarks (e.g. TPC-C and TPC-H); PostgreSQL system.

Bibliography

  • H. Garcia-Molina, J. Ullman and J. Widom. Database Systems: The Complete Book. Prentice-Hall, 2006 (2nd Edition).
  • J. Gray and A. Reuter. Transaction processing: Concepts and techniques. Morgan-Kaufmann, 1993.
  • M. Tamer Özsu, P. Valduriez. Principles of Distributed Database System. Springer, 2020. (4th Edition).
  • PostgreSQL 16.3 Documentation. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group, 2024.

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