Duration: 24 hours core (4 modules) + 8 hours introduction and tutoring

Course description:

The continuously increasing power of microprocessors and the very large capacity of modern electronic storage devices make it possible to embed Database Management Systems and the Databases themselves as inner components of larger application systems. The application areas which can mainly benefit from this technology are industrial control systems and hand-held mobile computation devices including Smart cards and cellular phones. In general, all applications that rely on Pervasive Systems can take advantage of such technology, wheremobility and context-awareness add further complexity to the typical DBMS functionalities.

Embedded Database Systems (EDBS) are

• oriented to real-time applications
• responsive to external events
• time- and location-sensitive
• often very small in size
• stored mostly in main memory
• able to process streaming data.

These features make EDBSs peculiar with respect to traditional DBMS as to the classical problems of

• data consistency  and correctness
• concurrency control
• query processing and optimization
• recovery management for durability

Therefore, the course introduces the main features of active, real-time, and main memory databases comparing them with the structure of a DBMS for traditional Information System management applications. 
The case of Pervasive Information Systems with mobile, context-aware very small databases, resident on smart cards, PADs, cellular phone SIM cards or Wireless Sensors, will be studied and examples of systems and applications will be presented. 

Since a preliminary knowledge of Database Systems is needed in order to profit of the technical details, the first days are devoted to an introduction to the architecture of database systems and to database design and languages. Though this part is optional for students who are already proficient in databases, we strongly recommend attendance in order to set a common background.

A written exam will be held based on questions on the whole program.