This theme provides a concise treatment of introductory and advanced database-related topics. Database systems form the primary means for storing data and representing information, therefore a thorough understanding of the capabilities of database systems is crucial for the professional development of any software system.

The theme consists of five lectures, which will chart the lifecycle of a database development (design, implementation, usage and optimisation). The need for data management drives the database design – development of conceptual models and their translation to relational models. The SQL (Structured Query Language) allows to implement models and to interact with the database in an efficient way. The advanced database features such as triggers, materialized views, usage of PL/SQL procedures and functions (Oracle specific) broaden even further the capabilities of a database system. In order to gain the most performance from a database system, it is important to know the optimisation and tuning concepts and best practices. Data Mining will show how to perform information extraction based on discovering hidden facts contained in databases.

Most of the advanced database features and optimisation are based on the usage of an Oracle database, but these issues are relevant also to other databases.

The lectures will also give practical examples that attendees will be free to download for future reference.

Wednesday 23 February

Lecture 1

Fundamentals of Database Design

Lecture 2

SQL: basics and recent advances

Lunch

Lecture 3

Advanced Database Features

Lecture 4

Performance Optimization and Tuning

Lecture 5

Data Mining: Extracting Knowledge from Data