Prof. Dr. Tara L Andrews, Unitobler D306 (Muesmattstrasse entrance)
Office hours: Monday and Wednesday, 2:00–3:00pm; and by appointment.
Monday, 10:15am–11:45am; Hörraum F002, Unitobler, Lerchenweg 36
Course evaluation will be a combination of participation (30%), homework assignments (30%), and the take-home final exam (40%).
Each class session will consist in large part of practical hands-on exercises led by the instructor. BRING YOUR LAPTOP! We will accommodate whatever OS you use, but it should be a laptop rather than a tablet. We will run a post-it note system in the class. If you get stuck, you put a post-it note on your laptop. If you have finished an exercise, you should look around for post-it notes and try to help whoever is stuck. You get a participation point for asking for help (putting up a Post-it note) as well as for trying to help someone who is stuck!
Just as in research and real life, collaboration is a very good way to learn and is therefore encouraged. If you need help with any assignment, you are welcome to ask a fellow student. If you do work together, then along with your homework please include a brief note (just a sentence or two) to indicate who did what.
You will receive a take-home final exam on the 18^th^ of May, to be completed by the 25^th^, in which you will apply the principles we have learned to a few research data scenarios.
| Date | Topic |
|---|---|
| 23 February | Introduction; overview of data management methods |
| 02 March | Files, filesystems, and version control |
| 09 March | Spreadsheets and tables beyond Excel |
| 16 March | Relational databases: when one table isn’t enough |
| 23 March | Object relationship mapping |
| 30 March | Basics of handling XML |
| 06 April | EASTER BREAK – NO CLASS |
| 13 April | NO CLASS |
| 20 April | XML databases |
| 27 April | More with XML databases |
| 04 May | Non-hierarchical data and graph databases |
| 11 May | More on graph databases |
| 18 May | RDF: graphs in XML |
| 25 May | FINAL EXAMS DUE |