Department of Computer Science Unversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Spring 2007 Database and Information Systems Qualifying Examination

The DAIS written qual traditionally lasts for 3 hours. (We are currently discussing whether to extend this time limit for the fall semester; this page will be updated once we make the decision.) Each student will be required to answer five questions out of 13. (We are currently discussing whether to reduce these problem counts; this page will be updated once we make the decision.) If an examinee answers more than five questions, the committee will randomly select five to grade.

The distribution of the questions by areas is as follows.

  1. Database Systems: 4 questions
  2. Data Mining: 3 questions
  3. Information Retrieval: 3 questions
  4. Bioinformatics: 3 questions

For each question, there will be three subquestions. The first is intended to test the basic knowledge related to a topic, the second is intended to test current research related to the topic, and the third is intended to test the examinee's research capability.

In addition to the five questions of the examinee's choice, each examinee must also answer one required question. The required question will test the examinee's understanding of the basic concepts from the four subareas of the exam, and the examinee must to answer 10 out of the 13 subparts of this question.


DAIS - Database and Information Systems Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 201 N. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, IL 61801, USA.  Fax: 217-265-6494, Phone: 217-244-6241.