Computer Science 455

Final Exam Review:

Disclaimer: I have attempted to be comprehensive in the following, but important items may have been omitted by mistake. If you see such an omission, please let me know, but you are responsible for all of the lecture material to date.

The final exam will be on Thursday, May 10, 4:00 PM. It will be a comprehensive, two hour exam.

In your review, please review

• The review guides for the first three hour exams, including notes on items to be deferred to a later exam (this may be it).
• The hour exams in this class (and you might want to take a look at previous finals). I sometimes include questions from hour exams on the final (or questions closely related)
• All homework
• Date, chapters 1 - 7, 9 - 11, 13
• Sunderraman: most of the book. Skip the sections on Java/JDBC and skim the chapter on embedded SQL
• The broad topics of the course, including
  • What a database management system is, what problems it solves, what models exist
  • SQL
  • Oracle and Oracle tools
  • Design (including top-down, bottom-up, and the resolution of the two approaches)
  • Other Software Engineering Issues for database management systems
  • Theory (data normalization, algebra, calculus)

My finals in this class tend to be more essay than hour exams (though exam #3 was an exception). I try to use the final exam as a way to tie together the various topics of the semester and give an overview of the term. That does not mean that all questions will be of a general nature - there will be questions asking for specifics as well.

Any questions? Please ask!