The Fall 2023 offering of this course will have some aspects taught in-person at Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh campus and some will be online. The lectures will be taught in person and all students are expected to attend unless there is extenuating circumstances. We will announce what elements will be provided online as the semester progresses and the University provides additional guidance (e.g., office-hours, project recitations).
How can I get off the wait list?
Our capacity in the course is limited to the number of TAs that we have and the room size. We will move students off of the wait list as new seats become available. Preferential consideration is given to SCS students. Switching between sections will not improve your chances of getting into the class. Please do not contact the instructors or the TAs about whether you have a chance of enrolling into the course. You will be contacted if you are enrolled in the class.
Will the lectures be recorded? Will the videos also be available on Youtube for non-CMU students?
Yes, we will record the lectures and make them available to CMU students. Our plan is to make the videos available to both CMU and non-CMU students on Youtube immediately after class
Does this course have recitations?
No, there are no scheduled recitations. There are only lectures. We will add additional help sessions for the projects during semester.
Do I need to know C++ for this course?
Yes, you should be familiar with programming and debugging in C++. All the course projects are on the BusTub system written in C++17. There will be a mandatory project to evaluate your C++ proficiency at the beginning of the semester. We will not teach you C++ during the semester. If you are unsure about your C++ programming skills, then please prepare accordingly. You can also to refer to the many on-line tutorials.
Will this course be taught in the Spring semester?
Yes! Intro to Database Systems (15-445/645) will be taught every semester. The Advanced Database Systems (15-721) course will also be taught in the Spring. See the CMU-DB Course page for additional information.
How can people not enrolled in the class test their projects?
All of the source code for the projects are available on Github. There is a Gradescope submission site available to non-CMU students (Entry Code: KK5DVJ). ⚠ Make sure you set your school to "Carnegie Mellon University". We will make the auto-grader for each assignment available to non-CMU students on Gradescope after their due date for CMU students. In exchange for making this available to the public, we ask that you do not make your project implementations public on Github or other source code repositories.
Where can I go to discuss the course material or projects?
Do not post questions about the project as GitHub issues. If you are a CMU student during the semester, then post your questions to the Piazza message board. If you are not a CMU student, there is an Discord channel to meet other students. Note: This Discord channel is not affiliated with CMU and will not be monitored by instructors or TAs.