Educational Database Prototype: the Simplest of All

TL;DR

This paper introduces EduDB, a simplified educational database prototype designed to give students a clear understanding of database systems and facilitate practical learning through integrative course projects.

Contribution

The paper presents EduDB, a minimalistic database prototype that simplifies learning and enables hands-on optimization projects for students.

Findings

EduDB provides a clear overview of database architecture.

Students can perform various optimizations using EduDB.

EduDB enhances understanding of DBMS concepts.

Abstract

Database Management System (DBMS) is designed to help store and process large collections of data, and is incredibly flexible to perform various kinds of optimizations as long as it achieves serializability with a high-level interface available. The current undergraduate level DBMS course in UW-Madison (i.e., CS564) involves implementing specific modules of DB architecture, including B+ tree, but students may end up spending numerous amounts of effort on corner cases and not gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the internal design. Thus, we present EduDB, a simple database prototype for educational purposes that provides students a clean, concise, and comprehensive overview of the database system. We also attempt to develop an integrative series of course projects based on EduDB, which offers a platform for students to perform any optimization learned during the semester.