Re: Materials for an Advanced Database course

--CELKO-- wrote:

> What would you want to see covered in a one semester Materials in
> an Advanced Database course taught at the graduate (or
> undergraduate) level?
>
> What materials (books, software, etc.) would you recommend for
> such a course?

Hello Joe:

Rather than direction as to material, I'll give you some idea as to the challenges I face in database design. A good course would provide solutions to these.

EXAMPLES ONLY. NO IMMEDIATE SOLUTIONS REQUIRED ! ! :)

1. What are the pros and cons of "artificial" keys. What are the necassary and sufficient conditions for a table to be have a natural key? As an example, I need to catalogue a few hundred motors. Each is identical in specification (and interchangeble). I must be able to tell one from the other. Does this require an artificial key which must be physically attached to the motor? What happens if a number of motors are installed without the key added?
2. Describe the "Cat Food" problem. I have tanks of product. Items that make up the material in these tanks are added (for instance: add 1 metric tonne of reagent #1 from stores, remove one tote of reagent #1 from stores, increase volume of bulk product by 0.78 cubic yards). Some of the material is processed to make a final product. (for arguments sake, lets say an individual 1/2 liter bottle of water). There may be 1,000 items in a lot. These are indistiguishable. What is left in the tank has further material added to it. At regular intervals, it is necessary to report how many "items" (potential bottles of water) of final product are in the tank. Can this be done without "bag sets"? If so, how?
3. How can one associate information retrieved from a process control computer that retains many items of information per second regarding a motor, from very many motors, with information manually collected hourly by people (who sometimes do not collect some or all of the information, which is in turn further information). This issue deals with relational theory per se and also the null controversy.
4. How do you secure a system, such that the identifier of the operator is the same for payroll (which none of the operators should have access too) and control charts (which all the operators have access to) (OK, maybe that is a fundemental, rather than advanced topic).
5. Relate the production rate to tank (hence distance from the process), operator and time. Relate this change as a motor approaches the preventive maintanence shutdown hours?
6. A critical component of production is difference in inventory from yesterday to today. How can this be done. (for readers other than Mr. Celko, this problem was solved by Mr. Celko in this group a few months back).

I currently do all of the above using paper, spreadsheets etc. It would seem that a database should be useable to summarize this accumulation of data.

Cheers.

John Eggert Received on Sun Jan 19 2003 - 00:02:05 CET