PREFACE
It is not every question that deserves an answer.
Publius Syrus, 42 B.C.
I hope that most of the questions in this book deserve an answer. The set of questions
is unusually extensive, and is designed to reinforce and deepen students’ understanding
of the concepts covered in each chapter. There is a strong emphasis on quantitative
and problem-solving type exercises.
While I wrote some of the solutions myself, most were written originally by students
in the database classes at Wisconsin. I’d like to thank the many students who helped
in developing and checking the solutions to the exercises; this manual would not be
available without their contributions. In alphabetical order: X. Bao, S. Biao, M.
Chakrabarti, C. Chan, W. Chen, N. Cheung, D. Colwell, J. Derstadt, C. Fritz, V.
Ganti, J. Gehrke, G. Glass, V. Gopalakrishnan, M. Higgins, T. Jasmin, M. Krish-
naprasad, Y. Lin, C. Liu, M. Lusignan, H. Modi, S. Narayanan, D. Randolph, A.
Ranganathan, J. Reminga, A. Therber, M. Thomas, Q. Wang, R. Wang, Z. Wang and
J. Yuan. In addition, James Harrington and Martin Reames at Wisconsin and Nina
Tang at Berkeley provided especially detailed feedback.
Several students contributed to each chapter’s solutions, and answers were subse-
quently checked by me and by other students. This manual has been in use for several
semesters. I hope that it is now mostly accurate, but I’m sure it still contains er-
rors and omissions. If you are a student and you do not understand a particular
solution, contact your instructor; it may be that you are missing something, but it
may also be that the solution is incorrect! If you discover a bug, please send me mail
(raghu@cs.wisc.edu) and I will update the manual promptly.
The latest version of this solutions manual is distributed freely through the Web; go
to the home page mentioned below to obtain a copy.
For More Information
The home page for this book is at URL:
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