COP4709 Spring 2018 Assignments
No surprise – this class has weekly assignments. Each assignment is designed to build you abilities as a database administrator and your ability to manipulate, query, and analyze data. Along the way we will learn key concepts of databases and database programming.
In all assignments your results should be presented (when appropriate) as a data analysis report. This is as important as your ability to do the analysis – a good report always wins. There is great information on writing these reports here and I have written a guide to the reports – Writing a Good Data Analysis Report .
Assignments
| Assignment | Description | Associated Lectures |
|---|---|---|
| COP4709 Assignment 1 – Database Review | Create a database in SQL Server – Getting SQL Server up and running and building a database in the environment. You will need to have your computer or a cloud service like Azure running SQL server and install SQL server management studio. You will be downloading some software from Dreamspark (dreamspark.com) | Topic – Review of Database I |
| COP4709 Assignment 2 – Import and Analyze Data | Import Data into a Database – You will start by importing and analyzing data. One of the most important things you will have to do as you work with databases is to get data from external sources into your database. This involves acquiring the data, cleaning the data, and importing the data. All three of these steps will be done in this assignment. | Topic – Importing Data |
| COP4709 Assignment 3 – Stored Procedures | Write a Stored Procedure – You will start writing stored procedures in this assignment. Stored procedures will be one of the most important and useful tools for you as a database manager or developer. The beauty of stored procedures is just that – they are stored in the database and are accessible encapsulation of common database tasks and queries. | Topic – Stored Procedures Part 1 |
| COP4709 Assignment 4 – Stored Functions | Write a Stored Function – You will now write a stored function that returns a table and another returning a scalar. These are the 2 common types of stored functions. Functions vary slightly from stored procedures – with a huge advantage, they can be used inline with queries. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 5 – Transactions | Create a Transaction – You will create a transaction stored procedure and discuss how it meets the requirements of transaction management. Managing transactions are important to the work of a database manager – bottom line, everything happens – or nothing happens. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 6 – Cursors | Use Cursors in Stored Procedures – Learn to use cursors in stored procedures. Cursors allow you to make stored procedures much more like real programming and allows you to literally loop through a query. | Topic – Stored Procedures Part 2 |
| COP4709A Assignment 7 – Reports | Create a Database Report – Learn to use Report Writer to create a report. There are all sorts of reporting services software like Crystal Reports which is the most popular. However, they all work essentially the same – they allow for very nicely formatted reports which can be static or interactive. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 8 – Lookup Tables | Use Lookup Tables – A common database practice is coded fields that rely on lookup tables | |
| SELECT ANY 7 TO COMPLETE ASSIGNMENTS | At this stage you now have all the basic tools to do pretty much everything with a database. There are hundreds of additional things we could cover if we have time. You can do these in any order. | |
| Assignment 9A – Food Analysis | Use of Aggregation operators in SQL. I recommend you do at least one assignment to go over aggregation. | |
| Assignment 9B -Pivot Tables | Create a Pivot Table for Data Analysis | |
| COP4709 Assignment 10A – Business Reports | Using real grades and some analysis you will generate a business report to a set of high-level questions. This is a business data analytics assignment. | |
| Assignment 10B Data Analysis CIS4360 | Using grades from CIS4360 CTS3348, and CTS2321 you will answer a business question about the effectiveness of pre-requisites. This is a business data analytics assignment. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 11A – Full text indexing | Full-text indexing opens up an entirely new world of querying. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 12A – Performance of queries | Learn how to use indexes and increase system performance | |
| COP4709 Assignment 13A – Security | Learn about SQL Injection, security, and how to harden a database | |
| COP4709 Assignment 14B – MongoDB | Create a database using MongoDB and demonstrate queries. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 14A – DynamoDB | Create a database using Amazon Web Services | |
| COP4709 Assignment 15A – Hadoop | Create a Hadoop Instance using Azure Web Services. | |
| COP4709 Assignment 15B – Review Paper | Review Paper | |
| Competition or Hack-a-Thon | You may use completion of a programming or innovation challenge (such as Cairn’s) or participation in a Hack-a-thon to fulfill any of the assignments 9-15 |
This is the old assignments page.
Past assignments:
COP4709 Spring 2016 Assignments
COP4709 Spring 2015 Assignments
COP4709 Spring 2014 Assignments
COP4709 Spring 2013 Assignments