Kenneth Ross

If you're hoping to learn SQL and how to use databases, this class does that... but only for the first few weeks. After that, it is all database management systems, but after the class you do have a pretty good idea of how databases are implemented which is useless for most people at the face level, but very useful for actually using databases. Still, the material is boring. Ross lectures as if he understands this fact and has surrendered to his powerlessness in changing it. Every lecture consists of a new topic which he explains well and a few examples. The review lectures are pretty useful. Basically, the structure, workload, and instruction of the class are all pretty good thanks to Ross, but you will be falling asleep anyway which is mostly the material's fault.

This was a super chill class. Ross goes much slower than any other CS prof I've ever had. Most of class is introducing a topic, and then slowly working through examples to cover every (corner) case of it, with plenty of time for questions. He records lectures and posts his notes.

He's not a bad professor, but the class itself can be a little boring if you're not into the material. The project is pretty fun to do. People say Ferguson is the best and to avoid Ross, but if you get him you're not too bad off. Midterm and final are all pretty reasonable, and can cram studying for (no study sheets though). This year, because of the protests/campus environment, he made the final a 24-hour take home that was based on your project, so it'd be harder to cheat.

class was confusing, boring, and unstructured, take with anyone else if possible! He drones on and on without passion and it's really hard to learn when it seems that the professor himself has zero interest in teaching and the subject. He also didn't record the lectures. The only good thing about this class was the project, it was quite fun and you learn a lot.

would not recommend this version of databases - take ferguson! initially, the first half of the semester was fine when it was just SQL, but during the second half of the semester, ross went extremely fast and many students in the class were confused. there was one time during office hours where over 40 students came, because that's how difficult and confusing the homeworks were. he was also extremely vague on ed whenever students asked for help, making the course more confusing. However, i do think this class is definitely manageable if this is your only choice - just make sure to go to class and read the textbook!!!

Workload is not high. The only work outside of the midterm and final are 2 HW assignments, which are SQL practice, and the semester-long project has you building a full-stack application (Python/Flask) which is genuinely useful experience, especially earlier on in your CS career. There is also an option for a project without coding, though I do not know much about it except that it sounds more boring. Therefore, the homeworks are pretty useful. The midterm (15% of the grade) and final (40% of the grade) do ask a few SQL questions, but are mostly theoretical questions about DB management systems. The midterm and final averages were around a 60 for the midterm and a 45 for the final which are kind of crazy considering databases is not supposed to be a terribly difficult class. There is a policy where the final replaces the midterm but that doesn't really happen since the midterm is hard, but the final is an affront to God himself. Ross curves reasonably though, so if you are able to repress the anxiety your raw scores will undoubtedly give you, you'll be alright.

4 parts of a project that you do in a pair. Parts of the project could be quite tedious and not directly related to course content (for example, spending hours trying to clean up data to insert into your database) but ultimately you end up with a cool end result. 2 homework assignments 1 midterm 1 final (cumulative)

The only graded assignments were a project (I strongly recommend you do it with a partner) with four parts. Part 3 (creating a website) took longest, and my partner and I spent probably 36 hours working on it right before the due date (this part was given over a month in advance. If we'd spread out the work and not been sleep deprived, this would take maybe a few hours a week of working at most). Expect to spend maybe 3-6 hours a week, reasonably, on the project? Grading was on a curve (there's no info about this online, so I figured I'd post here). This year, the grade cutoffs (uncurved) were as follows: A+ 98, A 91, A- 85, B+ 80, B 76, B- 70, C+ 68, C 65, C- 58, D 45. The project is 30% of your grade, the midterm is 20%, and the final is 50% (if you do better on the final, it replaces your midterm grade). The final was pretty reasonable.

assignments weren't too bad but some questions were rather confusing because he did a really bad job explaining the concepts in class. roughly ~5 hours per hw assignment? and more for the project.

project (building database system) 20%, homework 20%, midterm 20%, final 40%