Indice
Decision Support Databases A.Y. 2020/21
The course presents the main approaches to the design and implementation of decision support databases, and the characteristics of business intelligence tools and computer based information systems used to produce summary information to facilitate appropriate decision-making processes and make them more quick and objectives. Particular attention will be paid to themes such as conceptual and logical Data Warehouses design, data analysis using analytic SQL, algorithms for selecting materialized views, data warehouse systems technology (indexes, star query optimization, physical design, query rewrite methods to use materialized views). A part of the course will be dedicated to a collection of case studies.
<html><!–<p style=“color:#FF0000”;><b>The server managing video-recordings and SQL Server is DOWN till Monday 23 November.</b></p>–></html>
Instructor
- Salvatore Ruggieri (Lectures)
- Università di Pisa
Office hours: Tuesdays h 14:00 - 17:00 or by appointment, Department of Computer Science, room 321/DO.- Office hours only via Skype or Teams by appointment. Skype contact: salvatore.ruggieri
Classes
Lessons will be virtual using Teams (click here to access).
| Day of Week | Hour | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday | 11:00 - 13:00 | Teams |
| Friday | 14:00 - 16:00 | Teams |
Mandatory teaching material
- [DW] A. Albano, S. Ruggieri. Decision Support Databases Essentials, University of Pisa, 2 December 2021.
- [DB] A. Albano. DB Essentials and solutions to exercises, University of Pisa, 1 December 2020. This is a self-contained excerpt (in English) from the book Fondamenti di basi di dati (in Italian, free download).
- Examples of written exams with solutions and written exam.
Software
- JRS for practicing with logical and physical SQL query plans.
- Azure Data Studio client for connecting to SQL Server DBMS.
Preliminary program and calendar
Exams
There are no mid-terms. The exam consists of a written part and an oral part. The written part consists of open questions, small exercises, and a Data Warehouse design problem. Each question is assigned a grade, summing up to 30 points. Students are admitted to the oral part if they receive a grade of at least 18 points. Oral consists of critical discussion of the written part and of open questions and problem solving on the topics of the course.
Registration to exams is mandatory (look at the deadline for registering!): register here
| Date | Hour | Room | Notes |
|---|
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| 10/09/2021 | 14:00 - 16:00 | Online | Written exam ONLINE only! |
| 27/11/2020 | 14:00 - 16:00 | Online exam | Extra-ordinary exam |
–> </html>
Class calendar
Lessons will be virtual using Teams (click here to access).
Lessons will be mostly based on exercises and Q&A. Students must listen and study the required lessons of 2019 in advance.
Recordings are password protected. Ask the teacher for credentials.
2020-01. Wednesday 16 September 2020, 11-13 Recording
Course overview and organization.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-01 and 2019-02.
2020-02. Wednesday 23 September 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-01 and 2019-02.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-03.
2020-03. Friday 25 September 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-03. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-04 and 2019-05.
2020-04. Wednesday 30 September 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-04 and 2019-05. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-05. Friday 2 October 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-04 and 2019-05.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-06 and 2019-08.
2020-06. Wednesday 7 October 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-06 and 2019-08. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-07. Friday 9 October 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-06 and 2019-08. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-07 and 2019-10.
2020-08. Wednesday 14 October 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-07 and 2019-10. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-09. Friday 16 October 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-07 and 2019-10. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-11.
2020-10. Wednesday 21October 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-11. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-09.
2020-11. Friday 23 October 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-09. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-12 and 2019-13.
2020-12. Wednesday 28 October 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-09, 2019-12 and 2019-13. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-13. Friday 30 October 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-12 and 2019-13. Exercise text and solutions.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-14 and 2019-16.
2020-14. Wednesday 4 November 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-14 and 2019-16.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-15. Friday 6 November 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-14 and 2019-16. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-16. Wednesday 11 November 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-14 and 2019-16. Exercise text.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-17. Friday 13 November 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-14 and 2019-16. Exercise text and solutions.
@Home: listen and study lessons 2019-15 and 2019-17.
2020-18. Wednesday 18 November 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lessons 2019-15 and 2019-17. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-18.
2020-19. Friday 20 November 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-18. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-19.
2020-20. Wednesday 25 November 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-19.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-20.
2020-XX. Friday 27 November 2020, 14-16
This lesson is reserved for the extraordinary exam session.
2020-21. Wednesday 2 December 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-20. Exercise text.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-21.
2020-22. Friday 4 December 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on lesson 2019-21. Exercise text and solutions.
@Home: listen and study lesson 2019-22.
2020-23. Wednesday 9 December 2020, 11-13 Recording
Q&A, discussion, exercises on written test structure. Example of written exam.
@Home: no assignment.
2020-24. Friday 11 December 2020, 14-16 Recording
Q&A, discussion.
Class calendar of A.Y. 2019/20
Recordings are password protected. Ask the teacher for credentials.
2019-01. Wednesday 18 September 2019, 14-16 [DW: 1.1-1.2] Recording (past years)
Course overview. Need for Strategic Information. Information Systems in Organizations: Operational and Decision support. Data driven Decision support systems and Business Intelligence applications. From data to information for decision making. Types of data synthesis: Reports, Multidimensional data analysis, Exploratory data analysis.
2019-02. Friday 20 September 2019, 16-18 [DW: 1.3-1.7] Recording (past years)
The data warehouse (DW) and DW architectures. What to model in a DW: Facts, measures, dimensions and dimensional hierarchies. Examples of data analysis. Exercises on data analysis in SQL.
2019-03. Wednesday 25 September 2019, 14-16 [DB: 1.1, 2.1-2.5] Recording (past years)
Recalls: the Object Data Model.
2019-04. Friday 27 September 2019, 16-18 [DW: 2.1] Recording (past years)
DW modeling. A conceptual multidimensional data model. Representation of Fact, measures, dimensions, attributes and dimensional hierarchies. Key steps in conceptual design from business questions. How to identify fact types and fact granularity and measure types. How to identify dimensions, dimensional attributes and hierarchies. Examples.
Slides: university requirements.
2019-05. Wednesday 2 October 2019, 14-16 [DW: 2.1, A.1] Recording (past years)
The example of a data model for Master program exams. Presentation and discussion of the Hospital case study.
2019-06. Friday 4 October 2019, 16-18 [DB: 3.1-3.2] Recording (past years)
Recalls: the relational model and relational algebra. Exercises.
2019-07. Wednesday 9 October 2019, 14-16 [DW: 2.1,2.2,A.1] Recording (past years)
More about data mart conceptual design, changing dimensions and advanced data model features. From Conceptual design to relational logical design. Star model, snowflake, and constellation. Logical schema of the Hospital case study.
XX Friday 11 October 2019, 16-18
Lesson canceled to allow students' participation to the Internet Festival. It will be dsdovered later on.
2019-08. Wednesday 16 October 2019, 14-16 [DB: 3.2-3.3] Recording (past years)
Recalls: the relational model and relational algebra. Logical trees. Exercises.
2019-09. Friday 18 October 2019, 16-18 [DW: 2.3,2.4] Recording (past years)
Multidimensional Cube model: OLAP Operations. The extended cube and the lattice of cuboids. Pivot tables in Excel. PowerPivot.
Additional learning material:
- G. Harvey. Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies, 2013. Chp. VII-2 and example pivot table.
2019-10. Wednesday 23 October 2019, 14-16 [DW: A.2,3.1-3.5], [DWSol: B.2] Recording (past years)
Discussion of students' solutions of conceptual and logical design case studies: The airline companies. A Data Warehouse Design Methodology. Approaches. Design phases. Requirements specifications.
XX Friday 25 October 2019, 16-18
Lesson canceled due to institutional duties of the teacher. It will be dsdovered later on.
2019-11. Wednesday 30 October 2019, 14-16 [DW: 3.1-3.5] Recording (past years)
Data mart logical design. Slowly changing dimensions, fast changing dimensions, shared dimensions. Recursive hierarchies. Multivalued dimensions. Multivalued Dimensional Attributes.
2019-12. Monday 4 November 2019, 16-18, (Recover lesson - Room M1) [DB: 3.4], [DW: 4.1-4.8] Recording (past years)
Recalls on: ODM-to-Relational Mapping. A DW to support Analytical CRM Analysis.
2019-13. Wednesday 6 November 2019, 14-16 [DB: 4.1-4.2,5.1-5.11] Recording (past years)
Recalls on: DBMS, from SQL to extended relational algebra. Exercises.
Software: jrs2019.zip (with pre-loaded example) - see here for full system and book.
2019-14. Friday 8 November 2019, 16-18 [DW: 5.1-5.4] Recording (past years)
OLAP systems. Data Analysis Using SQL. Simple reports. Examples. Moderately Difficult Reports. Examples of variance reports. Solutions in SQL.
2019-15. Monday 11 November 2019, 16-18, (Recover lesson - Room C1) [DB: 6.1-6.6, 6.8, 7.1-7.2] Recording (past years)
Recalls of relational DBMS internals: Storage, Indexing and Query Evaluation. Physical operators and physical plans for projection, selection, joins and grouping. Examples.
Software: jrs2019.zip (with pre-loaded example) - see here for full system and book.
2019-16. Wednesday 13 November 2019, 14-16 [DW: 5.5-5.6] Recording (past years)
Very Difficult Reports without Analytic SQL. Example of reports with ranks. Analytic Functions with the use of partitions and running totals. Examples. Analytic Functions with the use of moving windows. Examples.
Software: Azure Data Studio.
XX Friday 15November 2019, 16-18
Lesson canceled due to institutional duties of the teacher. It will be dsdovered later on.
2019-17. Wednesday 20 November 2019, 14-16 [DW: 6.1-6.4] Recording (past years)
Data Warehouse Systems: Special-Purpose Indexes and Star Query Plan. Bitmap indexes. Join indexes. Star queries optimization and query plans. Examples. Table partitioning.
2019-18. Friday 22 November 2019, 16-18 [DW: 7.1-7.7] Recording (past years)
The problem of materialized views selection. The lattice of views and the greedy algorithm HRU for the selection of materialized views. Examples. Other algorithms for the choice of the views to materialize with a workload and dimensional hierarchies.
2019-19. Monday 25 November 2019, 16-18 (Recover lesson - Room C1) [DW: 8.1-8.2, DB: 3.5.1-3.5.4] Recording (current year)
Recalls of functional dependency properties and how they are used to reason about the properties of the result of a query. Properties of the group-by operator.
2019-19 bis. Wednesday 27 November 2019, 14-16 (Room C1)
Seminar (in Italian): Sistema per l’analisi di dati statici di supporto alle decisioni. Speaker: Vincenzo Minei (www.sadasdb.com).
2019-20. Friday 29 November 2019, 16-18 [DW: 8.3-8.6] Recording (current year)
The problem of evaluating the group-by before the join operator. First case: Invariant grouping. Examples. Other cases: double grouping, grouping and counting. Examples with star queries.
2019-21. Wednesday 4 December 2019, 14-16 [DW: 9.1-9.4] Recording (past years)
The problem of query rewrite to use a materialized view. Hypothesis and two approaches: With a compensation on the logical view plan, and with a transformation of logical query plan. Examples.
2019-22. Friday 6 December 2019, 16-18 [DW: 6.5-6.8] Recording (past years)
Data Warehousing trends: column-oriented DW, main-memory DW, Big Data framework.
2019-23. Wednesday 11 December 2019, 14-16
Examples of written exams with solutions. Q. & A.
Slides: exercises.
2019-24. Friday 13 December 2019, 16-18
Examples of written exams with solutions. Q. & A.