Winter 2025

Instructor: Qizhen Zhang
Time: Friday 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Location: BA 5256
Discussions: Piazza
Office hours: Friday 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM or by appointment in BA 5222

Course Description
A big move in the development of database management systems in recent years is the migration to the cloud, where users enjoy a variety of benefits, e.g., high availability, scalability, and elasticity, with database as a service. Meanwhile, database system architectures must be adapted to evolving trends in the cloud environment.
In this seminar course, we will discuss state-of-the-art cloud database systems recently published in top-tier database venues. Specific topics covered will be serverless, resource (storage and memory) disaggregation, new interconnect technologies (e.g., RDMA and CXL), multi-tenancy, and others. There will also be a final project where groups of students research a specific aspect of cloud databases.

Prerequisites
General background in database systems, computer systems, and networking (e.g., CSC343, CSC458, and CSC2209 or equivalent courses) is recommended.

Format
This seminar course consists of paper discussions and a final project. You need to form teams of 2-3 students for both paper presentations and the final project.

• Paper discussions. We meet for two hours every Friday to discuss two recent papers on a particular topic (see the schedule below). Before Friday, students need to read both papers and submit the reviews (i.e., summary, strengths, weaknesses, and detailed comments on each paper) on HotCrp. During the class, all students are expected to participate in the discussion.

  • To drive the discussion, starting from the third class, each paper is presented by two teams: an advocator team followed by an adversary team.
  • The team who serves as the advocator introduces the work in the first 15 min, followed by 15 min discussing its significance (e.g., strong motivation, innovative techniques, or the high impact it has generated or will generate) and addressing potential concerns.
  • The other team spends the next 20 min criticizing the work by showing, for example, the unrealistic assumptions, potential deployment issues, or limited impact.
  • Other students can join the discussion anytime (which is counted as your class participation) and will vote for a side at the end of the session. A class is divided evenly between two paper sessions.
  • We expect 10 teams for the course. Every team will pick two topics and serve as the advocator for one paper and the adversary for the other in each class.

• The final project. The second part of the course is to execute a research project on any topic related to cloud data systems. Each team will submit a 1-page project proposal (plus unlimited references) that will be reviewed and approved by the instructor. At the end of the term, each team will give a 15-minute presentation (12-minute talk + 3-minute Q&A) and write a 6-page report (plus unlimited references).

  • The project can be either the reproduction of a recently published work (or multiple of them) or the development of original ideas.
  • In the former case, students should understand, implement, and eventually improve the ideas of the work. Project quality will thus be evaluated by comprehension (20% if the selected work is clearly presented), completion (60% if the core ideas of the selected work are implemented and evaluated), and innovation (20% if new ideas are proposed, implemented, and evaluated).
  • If a team decide to focus on their own ideas, project quality will be evaluated entirely by innovation. In that case, students need to justify the novelty by elaborating the design and comparing it to prior work (50%) and demonstrate the feasibility by implementing and evaluating the ideas (50%).
  • The project proposal should clearly state which approach the team pursues.
  • Experimentation platform: Chameleon (instructions will be provided later).

Grading

• Reading and participation: 50%
  • Paper reviewing: 15%
  • Participation: 15%
  • Leading discussion: 15%
  • Winning the vote: 5%
• Final project: 50%
  • Proposal: 10%
  • Presentation: 20%
  • Report: 20%

Late Policy

• Paper reviews: 20% of the mark is deducted for late reviews before the class. No reviews will be accepted once the class is started. Students are allowed to skip the reviews of two papers without affecting their grade.
• Final project proposal and report: 20% of the mark is deducted for each day after the deadline.

Tentative Schedule