A First Course in Database Systems

Welcome to the home page for A First Course in Database systems, by Jeff Ullman, and Jennifer Widom.

The third edition of this book was published in September, 2007. It is a major updating and reorganization of the material, including new sections on UML, PHP, XML Schema, XPath, XQuery, and XSLT. The table of contents and the first two chapters can be seen here: Ch. 1 Ch. 2.

See also the landing page for Database Systems: The Complete Book.

Special Opportunity: Prentice-Hall, the publisher of this book and Database Systems: The Complete Book, is making available a special edition of these books that include the Gradiance automated homeworks and SQL Labs. Instructors should read the Signup Information to get this service for your class.

Index

Note: this page includes links for all three editions of FCDB. Some of the links actually take you to the home page for DS:CB, or to a page devoted to the topic selected.

Sample Database Projects.
Solutions to selected exercises: Second Edition; First Edition.
Errata for All Editions.
Slides and Lecture Notes.
Oracle Guide.
Exams and Homework from Previous CS145's.
Course Materials From Elsewhere.
Book-Ordering Information.

About the Second Edition

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

Table of Contents for the second edition.
You may download Chapter 1 in Postscript or PDF and Chapter 2 in Postscript or PDF.
The book has Demonstrated Appeal to Readers of All Ages.

Major Changes in the Second Edition

We separated object-oriented design from E/R design. Now we lead off with E/R and cover ODL in a separate chapter. We thought the idea that all these design notations were really small variations on a theme was important, but it seemed to confuse too many people. We hope the new arrangement will serve better.
We added considerable material on the object-relational model, both as an abstraction analogous to the relational model and the new SQL-99 standard for O-R features.
The extended relational algebra from DBSI that is needed for a discussion of query optimization has been combined with the ``classical'' relational algebra covered in FCDB. The result is that many more features of SQL can be explained in terms of specific relational-algebra operations than before.
We added a discussion of SQL/PSM (persistent stored modules), which is the procedural language of which Oracle's PL/SQL is the archetype.
We introduce the new interfaces between SQL and modern host languages: JDBC and SQL/CLI (ODBC).
A number of other SQL features have been updated to conform to the SQL-99 standard.

Support Materials Available

The materials below are available for use by others. Instructors are welcome to use them in their own courses, download them to their own class' web site, or modify them to suit. However, you must acknowledge the source of the original and not attempt to place your own copyright on this material.

Note: If you are creating your own materials for a course based on the book and would like to share them with the world, we would be happy to create a link to them.

Projects

We have several complete CS145 Sample Projects available.

Solutions to Exercises

We offer solutions to selected exercises from both editions.

Errata

For the Third Edition

See The Errata Sheet for FCDB/3e.

For the Second Edition

The errata for the second edition are identical to those on pp. 1-502 of Database Systems: The Complete Book. The most recent errata for FCDB/2e are found in Errata for DS:CB, but you should also check First Errata Sheet for DS:CB and Second Errata Sheet for DS:CB.

For the First Edition

Our list is growing! Send us a correction to ullman @ cs.stanford.edu and see yourself acknowledged on the errata page.

Slides and Lecture Notes

Check out the most recent CS145 Slides and Notes.

Ordering Information

The Prentice-Hall Web Page for FCDB has further information.
The Amazon Page for the book.