Computers and Data Organization

CS 281 is your introduction to thinking about data as a managed resource rather than just bytes in a file: how to model a domain with entities and relationships, how a DBMS stores and indexes records on disk, and how concurrency and recovery keep things consistent when many users hit the system at once. You'll move between the theory side (ER diagrams, relational algebra, normalization) and the practical side (writing real SQL, building a small database-backed application as the term project, plus homeworks and a quiz on indexing and transactions). It sits on top of your earlier data structures work and feeds directly into almost everything later — backend courses, information systems, and any senior project that touches persistent data.