Teaching Database Courses Using Educational System ADVICE

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Teaching Database Courses Using Educational
System ADVICE

• Miloš Cvetanovic , Zaharije Radivojevic
• School of Electrical Engineering, Belgrade
  University
• 12th Workshop
• Software Engineering Education and Reverse
  Engineering
• Opatija, Croatia
• 03-08 September 2012

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Agenda

• Course description
• Structure of ADVICE
• Implementation details
• Laboratory exercises and usage of ADVICE
• Assessment
• Conclusions

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Database course

• Type Mandatory course
• Starts 3 semester SE, 5 semester CE (of 8
  semesters for bachelor studies)
• Prerequisites -
• Class hours 221
• Format
• Midterm 20
• Laboratory 20
• Final 60
• SE 60 students, CE 110 students

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Course Syllabus

• Database systems
• Data modeling
• Relational databases
• Database query languages
• Relational database design
• Transaction processing

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Creating a tool for laboratory exercises

• Conceptual Design
• SQL DDL
• SQL DML
• Formal Query Languages
• Normalization

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Creating a tool for laboratory exercises
System Conceptual Design SQL DDL SQL DML Formal Query Languages Normalization Correctness Checking Distance Learning Progress Monitoring
SQL-Tutor No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes
NORMIT No No No No Yes Yes Yes No
KERMIT Yes No No No No Yes Yes No
SQL Trainer No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes
Gradiance SQL No No Yes No No Yes Yes Yes
SQLCourse No Yes Yes No No No Yes No
WinRDBI No No Yes Yes No No No No
Web-based Normalization Tool No No No No Yes No Yes No
LDBN No No No No Yes Yes Yes No
ADbC Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes No
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ADVICE

• ADVICE (Automated Database Verification with
  Interactive Counter Example)
• Tool for laboratory exercises
• Modular structure
• Teaching support
• Interactive tutoring

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ADVICE modules

• Core modules
• login
• users
• defining problems
• additional test
• Additional modules
• SQL DDL
• SQL DML
• relational algebra
• relational calculus
• conceptual modeling
• normalization

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Typical appearance of ADVICE
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Model verification algorithm

• match(answer, solution)
• schema1 toSchema(answer)
• schema2 toSchema(solution)
• reduce(schema1)
• reduce(schema2)
• for each (newSchema1, newSchema2)
• in eliminate(schema1, schema2)
• for each renamedSchema1
• in rename(newSchema1, newSchema2)
• if(compare(renamedSchema1, newSchema2))
• return success
• return failure

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Model verification example
An entity is missing Journey
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Query verification algorithm
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Query verification example
SELECT J.Distance, T.Model FROM Journey J, Truck
T WHERE T.IDTruJ.IDTru AND (SELECT COUNT()
FROM Drives D WHERE D.IDJouJ.IDJou)2
SELECT J.Distance, T.Model FROM Journey J, Truck
T WHERE T.IDTruJ.IDTru AND (SELECT COUNT()
FROM Drives D WHERE D.IDJouJ.IDJou)gt2
You have 1 row(s) less. Missing row (157,MAN)
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Query visualization
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Assessment

• main effect
• year factor is significant (F(2, 721)5.1286,
  p0.00614) , difference between the years.
• group factor is significant (F(1, 721)90.489,
  p0.0000), difference between groups.
• Interaction is not significant (F(2,
  721)0.90318, p0.40574), difference between
  groups is not dependent on the year.

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Conclusion

• Tool for support in laboratory exercises in
  databases related courses
• Modular and extendable structure
• Interactive iterative verification with query
  visualization
• Possibility for vertical integration into
  database course

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Thank you!

• Radivojevic Zaharije