Support Materials

• Help documents on Oracle: Over the years we've developed a number of popular documents that contain much of the information you will need for using Oracle. Some of the information is specific to our installation of Oracle and some of it is more general. These documents may be updated during the course, and we will let you know whenever that happens.

• Oracle Technology Network: Very useful comprehensive technical information on Oracle. You need to register, but it's free to do so.

• CGI Help Session (April 9)
• XML Parsing Help Session (April 25)

• SQL for Web Nerds: This slightly aging but still useful online manuscript by Philip Greenspun of MIT has many examples, anecdotes, and suggestions specific to Oracle. Particularly useful may be the section on Dates (somewhat more coverage than our local help document on the topic) and the section on Limits.

• From Sun:
  • Java Servlets Tutorial
  • Java Servlets Class Docs
  • JDBC Tutorial

• XML DOM interfaces:
  • For Java users, see package org.w3c.dom
  • For C++ users

• PHP Manual. Please remember that PHP is not supported by the course staff.

AuctionBase Overview

Your project is to build an online auction system called AuctionBase. At the back-end, AuctionBase manages all of its data in the Oracle database management system. At the front-end, AuctionBase provides a friendly Web interface to its users. AuctionBase is modeled roughly after the eBay online auction system. In fact, we will give you a considerable amount of real data downloaded from eBay (courtesy of the University of Wisconsin) to initially populate your AuctionBase system.

We will expect certain minimal functionality in each AuctionBase system - beyond that, the sky's the limit. Minimal functionality includes a variety of queries and browsing capabilities over the current items up for auction, the bids on those items, and the sellers and bidders. AuctionBase also must provide a means for entering bids, and for concluding auctions on individual items. Various integrity constraints must be monitored. Although AuctionBase uses the Oracle DBMS and therefore has transaction support, multi-user issues are not a focus of the project, at least this time.

At the end of the course, there will be a "contest" in which we select a few of the best AuctionBase systems to be demonstrated in class and linked to the course home page. Winners also will be invited to enjoy lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club with Prof. Widom, the TA's, and the other contest winners.

Programming and System Issues

To develop the project all students will use the Oracle relational database management system (Oracle 9.01 server, 8.1.7 clients) and the Unix operating system. You will try out Oracle's sqlplus interactive interface, its PL/SQL proprietary programming language, and several other features. For the Web front-end and interacting with Oracle, students may choose between two options. One option uses the Java programming language, Java Servlets, and JDBC. The other option uses the C and (optionally) C++ programming languages, CGI scripts, and Oracle's Pro*C. (Prior experience with Web-based programming is not necessary for the course - we will provide help sessions, handouts, and sample code.)

There are many other ways to develop Web applications, and even to interact with Oracle. Students are welcome to use alternative languages and tools if they wish, however only the languages and tools discussed above will be supported by the course staff, and the specifications for the project must be met regardless of the languages or tools used. The project also includes processing of XML files. We will provide XML parsers in C++ and Java, but again students are welcome to use other tools or languages if they prefer. Important note: Students using alternative languages and tools must be able to submit all of their code using the standard submission procedure, and their code needs to be able to be run and checked by the TA's with no additional effort over those projects implemented using the supported languages and tools.

Oracle, C, C++, and Java are available on the Sun Solaris workstations on the second floor of Sweet Hall, e.g., the saga, elaine, and myth machines. To open an account on these machines, type open at the login: prompt and follow the instructions. SCPD students can access the Sun workstations remotely. If you have access to an equivalent Oracle system (version 8 or higher, including PL/SQL and Pro*C or JDBC), you may use it instead of the Stanford system. However, we do expect you to use Oracle and not some other DBMS - not because we love Oracle, but because we can support only one DBMS, and we will be exploring some specific capabilities of this system. If you choose to use your own workstation and/or your own Oracle system, please be aware that we cannot make any exceptions for problems incurred by using your own computing facilities rather than those provided by Stanford.

We will assume that students are proficient already with Unix, and with either the C and C++ programming languages or the Java programming language.

Project Parts and Due Dates

The AuctionBase project proceeds in six parts, which are assigned and detailed as part of the relevant weekly assignments.

• Part 1: Oracle and Web Warm-Up     (assigned April 10, due April 17)

  You will make your selection between Java (including Servlets and JDBC) and C/C++ (including CGI and Pro*C). You will become familiar with the basics of Oracle and HTML, and you will implement a very simple end-to-end "system." The system has a single Web page with a button for submitting queries to Oracle, and a means of visualizing the results in HTML. We will provide a small Oracle database for your use.

• Part 2: Oracle and Web Warm-Up Part II     (assigned April 17, due April 24)

  You will extend your simple system from Part 1 to use additional features of Oracle and HTML: input boxes, menus, parameterized queries, result browsing, and database updates.

• Part 3: AuctionBase Schema and Data     (assigned April 24, due May 1)

  You will be given a large volume of data downloaded from the eBay Web site and stored in XML files. You will examine the data and design a good (we hope) relational schema for it. You will then write a program or scripts to transform the data from its XML form into Oracle's load file format, conforming to your relational schema. You will create your schema in your own Oracle database and load the data.

• Part 4: Oracle Features     (assigned May 8, due May 15)

  This part of the project will expose you to some additional aspects of Oracle, using the AuctionBase data. You will experiment with the performance effects of indexes, will write a small PL/SQL program, and will do some sleuth work on Oracle's view update functionality.

• Part 5: AuctionBase Constraints and Triggers     (assigned May 15, due May 22)

  This part of the project is assigned at the same time as Part 6. You will identify real-world constraints over the data in your AuctionBase system and will implement constraint-checking using Oracle CHECK constraints and triggers. You will also add a "current time" feature to your AuctionBase database.

• Part 6: AuctionBase Web Site     (assigned May 15, due May 29)

  As a baseline, you will design an appropriate set of queries and updates for your AuctionBase system and adapt your Part 2 simple Web interface for them. Ambitious students may migrate the simple front-end into a user-friendly Web interface that looks like a "real" auction site, and may exploit triggers and other Oracle features for additional functionality. Use your creativity. Several projects will be selected to be demonstrated on the last day in class (for glory, not grades).

Partners

The project may be completed individually or in teams of two, the choice is up to each student. A number of important issues and ground rules apply:

• An identical amount of work is expected and the same grading scale is used for individual and team projects. Faculty experience indicates that in general it is not necessarily easier or more productive to work in teams of two - it's largely a matter of personal preference and working style.

• If you work in a team, choose your partner carefully. Teams are permitted to "divorce" at any time during the course (due to incompatibility, one partner dropping the course, or any other reason), and individual students may choose to team up as the project progresses, however students from divorced teams may not form new teams or join other teams. Put another way, if a student turns in any part of the project as part of a team, every later part of the project must be turned in individually or as part of the same team.

• Both partners in a team will receive exactly the same grade for each project part turned in jointly. We will not entertain any complaints of the form "I did all the work and my partner did nothing." Choose your partner carefully!

• If you work in a team, your work must be turned in jointly, as one submission. For work turned in late, penalties will be applied to both partners, although partners may have different numbers of "chits" remaining as detailed in the Late Policy section of the Assignments page. Teamwork turned in as individual work will be detected as plagiarism and considered a violation of the Stanford Honor Code.

Honor Code: Programming Work

Note that a similar discussion of the Honor Code as it pertains to written work is provided in the Assignments page.

Under the Honor Code at Stanford, each of you is expected to submit your own original work, or the original work of your two-student team in the AuctionBase project. On many occasions it is useful to ask others (the instructor, the TA's, or other students) for hints or debugging help, or to talk generally about programming strategies. Such activity is both acceptable and encouraged, but you must indicate any assistance (human or otherwise) that you received. Any assistance received that is not given proper citation will be considered a violation of the Honor Code. In any event, you are responsible for coding, understanding, and being able to explain on your own or as a team all project work that you submit.

The course staff will be using plagiarism detection software to ensure that students are working individually or within their teams. We will pursue aggressively all suspected cases of Honor Code violations, and they will be handled through official University channels.

If you have any questions about this policy or about the degree to which we will pursue Honor Code violations, please discuss your concerns with the course staff immediately.