Systems for data management and data science

CS-460

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  • Lectures: Mondays from 14:15 to 16h
  • Exercise sessions: Mondays from 16:15 to 18h
  • Project office hours (upon prior request): Tuesdays from 11:15 to 12h GR A3 32

You are expected to actively participate in the Lectures and Exercise sessions. You do not need to be present during the Project office hours, they will be used to offer more specific support for those who need it.

Lectures and exercise sessions take place in person, room CE12 (no streaming). Although recordings of lectures from previous years will be made available, we strongly recommend attending the current lectures and exercise sessions, as there may be differences between this year's material and that of previous years.

There will be an optional midterm exam covering the material from the first six lectures. While this exam is not mandatory, we highly recommend taking it, as it provides a great opportunity to assess your understanding of the course content and see if you're on track. The midterm will help you identify areas that may need further review before the final exam. The final exam will cover the material from the entire course.

Grade composition
Project 40%
Exam 60%


Teaching assistants:
Project:
  • Yi Jiang (yi.jiang@epfl.ch)
  • Hamish Nicholson (hamish.nicholson@epfl.ch)
Exercise sessions:
  • Akash Dhasade (akash.dhasade@epfl.ch)
  • Diana Petrescu (diana.petrescu@epfl.ch)
  • Rishi Sharma (rishi.sharma@epfl.ch)
  • Mathis Randl (mathis.randl@epfl.ch)
  • Milos Vujasinovic (milos.vujasinovic@epfl.ch)
Student assistants:
  • Jakob Gerhardt (jakob.gerhardt@epfl.ch)
  • Alexander Procelewski (alexander.procelewski@epfl.ch)
  • Elif Kurtay (elif.kurtay@epfl.ch)
Staff:
  • Martijn de Vos (martijn.devos@epfl.ch)
TA contact list: 
cs460-2025@groupes.epfl.ch


17.02 (Week 1) Introduction, logistics and storage hierarchy


Project 1 - Query Processing and Optimization


24.02 (Week 2) Query execution


03.03 (Week 3) Query optimization


10.03 (Week 4) Transactions


17.03 (Week 5) Intro to distributed execution and distributed transactions


24.03 (Week 6) Distributed query execution, MapReduce, and dataflow


31.03 (Week 7) Mid term


07.04 (Week 8) Gossip protocols


14.04 (Week 9) DHT + Consistency models


21.04 Easter holiday: no lecture or exercises


28.04 (Week 10) Key-value stores, CAP theorem


Project 2 - Recommendation Serving


05.05 (Week 11) Scheduling


12.05 (Week 12) Stream processing


19.05 (Week 13) Distributed learning systems


26.05 (Week 14) Guest lecture (not part of the final exam)


17.06 Final exam

June 17, from 9:15 to 12:15 (for non-special arrangements).

Closed book exam. The questions will be related to the content of all topics covered, except for the final (guest) lecture by Oracle.

The final term will be on-site, on Moodle. 

Personal Belongings: Please place all personal belongings (e.g., backpacks, jackets, and any internet-capable devices), at the designated area at the front of the room. 

Bring your laptop, fully charged (and the charger, power cord, extension cord etc.). If you do not have a laptop or cannot use it, please let us know until Friday, 13.06.2025. 

Bring your Camipro card and an official ID card: We will check the identities of the students taking the exam. Anyone not present in one of the designated rooms will be considered absent, even if they happen to submit the responses. In other words, you cannot take the exam from home or anywhere else than your designated room at EPFL.

Any sort of communication or using any device (e.g., smartphones, headphones/earphones, smart watches) other than your computer or a calculator is strictly prohibited. Please do not minimize the window. Opening any software other than a web browser (including the Spotlight search on MacOS) or a web page other than the final exam on EPFL Moodle (e.g., course slides, search engines, ChatGPT and other LLMs) is strictly prohibited. A physical calculator is permitted for the purpose of the exam. The usage of the calculator app on the laptop is not allowed. We obviously trust your integrity. Nevertheless, any form of cheating will be reported and can entail severe consequences.

One A4 page cheat sheet is allowed (no constraints: single- or double-sided, printed or handwritten). Two one-sided pages are NOT "One A4 page", therefore not allowed.

You will be given one A4 blank sheet to use as scrap paper (possibly more on demand). You are not allowed to use your own scrap paper.

Desk Arrangement: On your desk, you are allowed only the essentials: a pen/pencil, your laptop (along with a charger/extension cord, if necessary), your Camipro card and official ID, your cheatsheet, the provided scrap paper, and a bottle of water or another beverage.

The Moodle Quiz has ungraded explanation text boxes. Please use these boxes only to state assumptions that are not part of the question or any further explanation. Any answers in these boxes will not be considered. The content in these boxes will only be referred to in case of discrepancies. These are NOT mandatory.

There will be NO CLARIFICATIONS during the exam. The questions and their contexts should be sufficient to attempt them. If you think there is something missing or wrong, make "reasonable" assumptions and justify them in the explanation box.

You can attempt the quiz multiple times but only the last attempt of each student will be graded.

DO NOT copy/paste in text boxes. Moodle has issues with encoding, which may crash the quiz attempt. You should input/write in the designated box directly, only.

At the end of the quiz, you will have a grace period to submit your attempt.

It is mandatory to "Submit all and Finish" at the end. Submissions that are not submitted will NOT be graded.

Once you are done, before you leave, you need to wait for Teaching Assistants to record your departure in the presence sheet. Attempts after departure are prohibited.

You are not allowed to leave in the first and last 30 minutes of the exam.

Consequences for Non-Compliance: Adhering to these rules is crucial. These measures are in place to protect the integrity of our examination process and ensure fairness for all students.

Room assignment:

CE 1 1 - SCIPER < 329000.

CE 1 2 - SCIPER between 329000 and 370000, inclusive.

CE 1 515 - SCIPER > 370000.

BC 129 (special arrangements) In case you are assigned to this room, you will have received an e-mail.