| Day Section | Evening Section | |
|---|---|---|
| Lectures: | T 1-3, BA 1180 | W 6-8pm, BA 1200 |
| Tutorials: | R 1, BA 1180 | W 8pm, BA 1200 |
| Instructor: | Diane Horton | Manos Papagelis |
| Office: | BA 4236 | BA 2200 |
| Office Hours: | M and W 3-4:30 | T 12-2 or by appointment |
| Email: | dianeh AT cs DOT utoronto DOT ca | papaggel AT cs DOT toronto DOT edu |
| Phone: | (416) 978-6024 | - |
| Course Website: | http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~csc343h/fall | |
Contact | Prereqs | Marking Scheme | Text | Partners | Policies | Lates | Offences | Accessibility
Contact: Website, Email, Discussion Board
Information from us: The course website (http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~csc343h/fall) is required reading. It contains assignment handouts and other essential material. The course discussion board is where we will post assignment tips and clarifications and other important information. You are responsible for reading all postings made by the course instructors.
Questions from you: You should use the course discussion board, rather than email, to ask questions about assignments and course lecture material. This way, everyone can benefit from the question and the answer. For personal questions, email us from your UofT or cdf address. Please include "343" in the subject line and sign your full name. Messages that are short, specific and address a single topic are most likely to receive a prompt reply.
We will try to respond to email and discussion board postings by the end of the next business day. However, it may take longer, especially near due dates. Please try to start assignments early so that you can ask your questions well ahead of the due date. And remember that if you do not hear back quickly, we are always available during office hours to help.
Prerequisites
Check the course prerequisites for this course in its Arts and Science calendar entry If you don't satisfy these, you need to talk with your instructor in the first week of classes to see whether you may remain in the course. If we don't issue a waiver, the registrar may remove you from the course at some inconvenient time!
Separate from course prerequisites, there is a CGPA prerequisite that applies to all Arts and Science students in CSC343: You must either be enrolled in a CSC Subject POSt, or have a CGPA of at least 3.0. Waivers of this prerequisite must be requested through the Computer Science Undergraduate Office.
Neither type of prerequisite applies to engineering students.
Course Marking Scheme
| Mark Component | Due week | Week of | Due time | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gradiance exercises #1 | week 3 | 26 Sep | Thu 10 pm | 2% |
| Gradiance exercises #2 | week 4 | 03 Oct | Thu 10 pm | 2% |
| Assignment 1 | week 5 | 10 Oct | Thu 10 pm | 10% |
| Gradiance exercises #3 | week 6 | 17 Oct | Thu 10 pm | 2% |
| Midterm | week 7 | 24 Oct | Day section: during tutorial Evening section: during the first hour of class Location TBA |
15% |
| nothing! | week 8 | 31 Oct | ||
| Assignment 2 | week 9 | 07 Nov | Thu 10 pm | 10% |
| Gradiance exercises #4 | week 10 | 14 Nov | Thu 10 pm | 2% |
| Gradiance exercises #5 | week 11 | 21 Nov | Thu 10 pm | 2% |
| Assignment 3 | week 12 | 28 Nov | Thu 10 pm | 10% |
| Final exam | during the exam period | see http://www.artsci.utoronto.ca/current/undergraduate/exams | 45% | |
In order to pass this course, you must earn
at least 40% on the final exam.
Textbook and Gradiance online exercises
The required textbook is A First Course in Database Systems, by Jeffrey D. Ullman and Jennifer Widom, 2008 (3rd Edition). The text is an excellent companion to the lecture notes, which do not cover every topic in complete detail. You may purchase the textbook through the UofT Bookstore. You can also purchase it online directly through the publisher, or through online book retailers such as Chapters or Amazon.
In addition to the textbook, you will need to use the Gradiance online system, where you will be doing several sets of small exercises for part of your course credit. For the first time, this year Gradiance access is provided for free!
To register for Gradiance, go to the Gradiance login page and click on Create New Account. We must be able to identify you in order to give you credit for your work, so you need to do two things when you register for Gradiance:
- When asked to choose a Unique User ID, use your utoronto account name if possible. The next best choice is your cdf account name, which you can find out using http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/webfinger. If you are unable to use either of these, contact us.
- When asked for your name, give your name exactly as it appears on your student card.
The class token for gradiance is: 6754B8DD
Working with a Partner
You have the option of partnering with one other (currently enrolled) csc343 student for your assignments, and we encourage you to do so. The ability to work effectively in a team will be very important in your career, and that involves many skills beyond the purely technical aspect of creating working code.
You may choose your own partner, and it need not be the same person for each assignment. If you do have a partner for an assignment, submit only a single copy of your work. Jointly submitted assignments will be graded in the usual way and both partners will receive the same mark.
Working with a partner has the potential to lighten your workload or to increase it, depending on how well you work together. Be aware that simply dividing the work and assembling your separate pieces at the end is a poor strategy for completing successful assignments. And of course, you are responsible for learning the course material underlying all parts of the assignments. You will have the most success if you truly work together.
Assignment Policies
You must make sure that all your assignments work on the cdf machines. Code that fails on cdf, even if it works in another environment, will be marked as not working.
All assignments will be due on a Thursday at 10:00 pm sharp. Assignments must be submitted electronically, using the Markus online system (link TBA). Log in with your CDF username and password. Be sure to confirm that you have submitted all the required files and the correct version of each; we cannot accept missing files or a different version of an already-submitted file after the due date.
If you feel an error was made in marking an assignment or test please submit a remark request within a week. Use the Remark Request Form on the Forms page. Note that the entire assignment or test may be re-assessed.
Late Assignments
To help you balance your workload, every student is granted 3 "grace day" points for use during the term. You and your partner can have a grace day using one point each, which allows you to submit up to 24 hours late without penalty. Similarly, you can have two grace days with two points each, or three with three points each. Weekends and holidays count when calculating grace days. Your pair will only get credit for late work if both partners have enough grace day points left. You may not transfer unused grace days to another student.
If you have exhausted your grace days, course work can only be accepted late or waived if there is a documented medical reason or other emergency. Please contact me as soon as possible if you are experiencing such an emergency so that we can make appropriate arrangements. You must use the approved UofT Student Medical Certificate for notes from a doctor.
Academic Offences
The work you submit must be your own. It is an academic offence to copy someone else's work. This includes their code or their words, or even their ideas. Whether you copy or let someone else copy, it is an offence. Academic offences are taken very seriously.
At the same time, we want you to benefit from working with other students. This is one reason why you may work in pairs for the assignments. Obviously, work done with your partner is a joint effort. You are also welcome to work appropriately with students other than your partner. It is appropriate to discuss course material and technology related to assignments, and we encourage you to do so. For example, you may work through examples that help you understand course material or a new technology, or help each other configure your system to run a supporting piece of software. You may also discuss assignment requirements. However, other than between partners, collaboration on assignment solutions is strictly forbidden. The most certain way to protect yourself is not to discuss assignment solutions or the ideas behind them with students other than your partner. Certainly you must not let others see your assignment solutions, even in draft form. See http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fpitt/documents/plagiarism.html for more advice about avoiding academic offences.
Please don't cheat. we want you to succeed and am here to help if you are having difficulty.