This course has two objectives.  First, it aims to introduce a number of advanced database topics including query optimization and transaction processing.  Students are expected to acquire the skill to propose an efficient query evaluation plan and the knowledge to explain how to enable concurrent transaction executions.  Both of them are important to the performance and correctness of a database system.  The second objective is to introduce the important issues in various types of specialty databases including parallel databases, distributed databases, spatial databases and real-time databases.  We discuss how to exploit parallelism in processing queries, how to process transactions that access data stored at several sites, how to query spatial data and how to process transactions that access temporal data in a timely manner.  All these are important techniques to support sophisticated systems or applications like decision support systems, geographic information systems and real-time systems. 

For a student to pass the course, at least 30% of the maximum mark for the examination must be obtained.