Databases in the cloud: a work in progress

  • Authors:

  • Edward P. Holden;Jai W. Kang;Dianne P. Bills;Mukhtar Ilyassov

  • Affiliations:

  • Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA;Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on SIG-information technology education
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

This paper describes a curricular initiative in cloud computing intended to keep our information technology (IT) curriculum at the forefront of technology. Currently, our IT degrees offer extensive database concentrations at both the undergraduate (BS-IT) and graduate (MS-IT) levels. Plus in the future, we plan to expand our offerings with a graduate degree focused on enterprise data management, initially on-campus, but ideally also in online learning format. Supporting this curriculum requires extensive lab facilities where students can experiment with different aspects of database architecture, implementation, and administration. Computing in the cloud may provide additional infrastructure and curricular flexibility. Cloud computing is the use of virtual computing technology that is scalable to a given application's specific requirements, without local investment in extensive infrastructure, because the computing resources are provided by various vendors as a service over the Internet. This paper describes our initial work with a graduate student in preparing to offer our foundation database administration course, Database Architecture and Implementation, in the cloud. The student has implemented the existing lab activities for this course under Oracle 11g using currently-available cloud resources. In addition to discussing the choices and pitfalls involved in this initial implementation, this paper discusses our plans to move forward in this area: testing cloud-based education with our database students; followed later by full scale implementation, along with the cost implications. If successful, this approach will open up the ability to move into new curricular areas and technologies without costly upfront investment in hardware and software.