CSE 544: Database Management Systems -- Mini-project

Overview

The goal of the mini-project is to allow you to experiment on your own with some techniques or systems discussed in class. The workload should be comparable to 1 or 2 homework assignments.

Organization

Teams of size 1 or 2 or 3.

Deliverables

Project proposal (suggested length: 1 page)
Major milestone (suggested length: 3-4 pages)
Project presentations: 10' (+ 2' questions)
Final report (suggested length: 5-8 pages)

Submit by placing the pdf file in the project directory of your Gitlab repository.

Topic

This is a mini-project, hence limited in scope. It is also open-ended: you are encouraged to deviated from our suggestions and come up with your own ideas.

Suggestions for choosing a topic

Preferred: choose a data management problem related to your own research.
Reproduce some of the experiments in a research paper. Examples:
- Reproduce figures 7 and 8 from here. Variations: use a different system rather than postgres, or use a different dataset rather than the JOB benchmark.
- Reproduce figures 2 and 3 from here. HyPer is not available: you need to choose some other DBMS instead.
- Reproduce figure 16 from here. Notice that umbra is available only in binary.
- Compare different storage formats as here or here
- Pick your favorite paper, reproduce those experiments. [We may add more suggestions here]
Compare the performance of 2 or more DBMS on some standard workloads.
- Suggestions for workloads: JOB, STATS, Subgraph Matching (SM), or the tried and tested TPC benchmarks.
- Suggestion for systems: Postgres, DuckDB, SQLServer, MySQL, SQLite, Oracle, Snowflake (basically anything that you have access to, and have interest in using).
Implement an algorithm and measure its performance. Suggestions:
- Implement Wander Join (an efficient algorithm for sampling from joins).
- Implement Worst-case Optimal Join (an efficient multi-join algorithm for cyclic queries, which we plan to discuss in class). To keep the project short, you may choose to use an eager index instead of the lazy hash-trie.
Add some new functionality to a system. E.g.
- Add a progress indicator to a query engine (e.g. to DuckDB).
- Add a simple graphical output to a query engine; e.g. instead of representing the output of select A,count(*) ... as a table, represent it as a bar graph.

P0: Project Teams October 17, 2025 (0 Points)

Decide if you want to work alone, or team up with some colleague(s) in class; teams can be up to 3 stduents. Write your team here.

P1: Project Proposal October 31 2025 (10 Points): Details

Please submit a pdf file. Suggested length: 1 page.

Your name or names (please use the name you used in Canvas)
A title of your project
Short description of what you want to do (could be as short as 2-3 sentences)
What system are you planning to use? And do you have access to it? E.g. if you are planning to use Redshift, do you have AWS credits? Or will use an open-source system?
What data are you planning to use? Same here: tell us if you have access to the data, have looked at it, and whether you have checked that you can get it and use it for your mini-project.
What are you planning to report? E.g. you plan to show two graphs, the first is the runtime as a function of the data size, the second is a graph showing the runtime as a function of the record size. If you are less sure, you can be more vague, but do make an effort to think about what you would like to report.
References: cite any papers that you are planning to use in your mini-project.

You may change the plan in your proposal: we do not enforce the final report to follow the proposal strictly. The goal of the proposal is to force you to start thinking about the project, and it's OK if you change your mind later.

P2: Major Milestone November 21 2025 (40 points): Details

Please submit a pdf file. Suggested length: 3-4 pages.

Aim to have the structure of the final report, but parts of it are only tentative. Structure your milestone as follows:

Your name or names (please use the name you used in Canvas)
The title of your project
Describe the problem you are solving.
Describe the system(s) that you are experimenting with.
Describe the data data you are using.
Results: 2-3 graphs.
Discussion of the results: this is the most interesting part of your min-project.
For team projects: describe what each team member did in the project.
References: cite any papers that you used in your mini-project.
Some parts may be incomplete: in that case describe the plan for finalizing that part.

One-on-One Project Meetings December 1st 2025

I plan to meet one-on-one with each team. More details TBD

P3: Project Presentations December 3rd 2025 (40 points): Details

We will organize a mini-workshop, where every project team can present their work. More details TBD.

Date: December 3rd
You will probably have 10', possibly 12' for your presentation
Plan about 1 slide per minute. Suggested structure:
- Title slide with your name(s) and affiliations
- Problem description. 1-3 slides. Examples:
  - Are you reproducing some experiments? Describe what that paper is trying to solve.
  - Are you benchmarking several systems? Describe what question you are interested in. ("Which of the systems X, Y, Z has the highest throughput for applications of type BLAH?")
  - Are you implementing a specific algorithm? Describe the motivation behind it.
- Background: 1-2 slides. Describe any techniques that the audience should know about in order to follow your talk.
- Methodology 1-2 slide. Describe your approach.
- Findings 1-3 slides: shows us your experimental results.
- Discussion. This is important: summarize the main take away points for the audience to remember.
We will have 2 sessions: 2-5:30 and 6:00-9:20. Please try to stay for your entire session (about 3.5 hours). The goal is for you to ask questions, and engage in discussions. We will have a poll where you will vote for the best presentation in your session (and there will be small prizes for the winners).

P4: Final Report December 8, 2025 (10 points): Details

Submit a pdf file. Suggested length: 5-8 pages. Same structure as the Major Milestone, with all parts completed now.