Introduction to Database Systems

UC Berkeley, Spring 2025

Alvin Cheung

Alvin Cheung

akcheung@cs.berkeley.edu

Pronouns: he/him/his

OH: Tues 1-2pm on Zoom, or by appointment

Hi all! I’m an EECS faculty and my group works on data systems research. Looking forward to meeting you all!

Lakshya Jain

Lakshya Jain

lakshya.jain@berkeley.edu

Pronouns: he/him

OH: Monday 9-10 AM, virtual or by appointment

Hello! I’m a Cal alum who’s taught CS186 for years now, first as a TA and then as a lecturer. I did my undergraduate and masters’ degree from here and now work in industry as a software engineer. In my free time, I analyze elections. Go Bears!

  • Notes are meant to be a supplement to lecture; they are not meant as a replacement. Notes do not cover the full scope of what is tested on exams.
  • All lecture videos are posted on bcourses afterwards.

Zoom link for live lectures.


Week Date Lecture Discussion Vitamin Project
1 Jan. 22 0. Introduction and
1. SQL I
No Section SQL (due 2/3) Setup
(due 1/30)
2 Jan. 27 2. SQL II SQL
Regular
(Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
(Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
  SQL
(due 2/6)
  Jan. 29 3. Disks, Buffers, Files      
3 Feb. 3 4. Cost Models and
Indexes
Disks + Files
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
Disks, Buffers, Files (due 2/10)  
  Feb. 5 5. B+ Trees     B+ Trees
(due 2/20)
4 Feb. 10 6. B+ Trees and Costs B+ Trees
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
B+ Trees (due 2/17)  
  Feb. 12 7. Spatial &
Vector Indexes
     
5 Feb. 17 President’s Day Buffer Management & Spatial Indices
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep(Slides
(WS)
Buffer Management & Spatial/Vector Indexes (due 2/24)  
  Feb. 19 8. Buffer Management      
6 Feb. 24 9. Sorting and Hashing Sorting & Hashing
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep (Slides
(WS
Sorting and Hashing (due 3/3) Joins + QO
(Part 1 due 3/6)
(Part 2 due 3/13)
  Feb 26 10. Joins + Midterm 1 Review
Midterm 1 (8-10pm)
     
7 Mar. 3 11. Iterators and
Relational Algebra
Iterators and Joins
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
Iterators and Joins + Relational Algebra (due 3/10)  
  Mar. 5 12. Query Optimization:
Plan Space
     
8 Mar. 10 13. Query Optimization:
Costs and Search
Query Optimization
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
Query Optimization (due 3/13)  
  Mar. 12 14. Transactions and
Concurrency I
    Locking
(Part 1 due 3/28)
(Part 2 due 4/7)
9 Mar. 17 15. Transactions and
Concurrency II
Transactions and Concurrency Control
Regular (Slides)
(WS) + (Sol)
Exam Prep
Transactions and Concurrency Control (due 3/31)  
  Mar. 19 16. Recovery I      
10 Mar. 24 Spring Break      
  Mar. 26 Spring Break      
11 Mar. 31 17. Recovery II Recovery Recovery (due 4/7)  
  Apr. 2 18. Recovery III     Recovery
(due 4/24)
  Apr. 3 Midterm 2 (8-10pm)      
12 Apr. 7 19. Parallel Query Processing Parallel Query Processing Parallel Query Processing (due 4/14)  
  Apr. 9 20. Distributed Transactions: 2-Phase Commit      
13 Apr. 14 21. Distributed Transactions: Paxos Distributed Transactions Distributed Transactions (due 4/21)  
  Apr. 16 22. NoSQL I: data models      
14 Apr. 21 23. NoSQL II: MongoDB Consensus Consensus (due 4/28) NoSQL
(due 5/8)
  Apr. 23 24. NoSQL III: MapReduce and Spark      
15 Apr. 28 25. Database Research [optional] NoSQL NoSQL (due 5/5)  
  Apr. 30 26. AWS [Optional]      
16 May. 5 RRR Week RRR Week - Review Sections    
  May. 7 RRR Week      
17   Final (TBD)