CSE 350: Advanced Data Structures and Indexes (Spring 2026)

[Logistics] [Course Requirements] [Academic Integrity] [Grading] [Lecture Schedule] [Assignments] [Accessibility Resources]

Course Description

Welcome to CSE 350 Advanced Data Structures and Indexes of Spring 2026. This course expands on CSE 250 Data Structures by introducing techniques for data organization that account for the memory hierarchy and the need for concurrent access. Topics include relational data model and SQL, IO Complexity, On-Disk Tree- and Hash- based structures, Write-optimized data structures (e.g., LSM Indexes and Beta-Epsilon Trees), Serialization/Data Layout, Caching, Secondary Indexes, Concurrent Data Structures, and Versioned Data Structures. The specific covered topics vary across semesters. This course also introduces SQL queries and Relational Algebra as a framework for reasoning about data access methods.

Logistics

• Location and time:
  • Lecture: Norton 213, Tuesday & Thursday 3:30 PM to 4:50 PM.
  • Recitation: Norton 213, Thursday 5:00 PM - 5:50 PM.
• Instructor: Zhuoyue Zhao.
• Office hours (subject to change, please check Piazza for updates):
  • TBD
  • No office hours on the following days: TBD.
• Annoucement and discussion board: Piazza.
  You're encouraged to use Piazza for public discussions with students in class.
  Please send private messages on Piazza to the instructor if you have any requests or questions regarding the assignments/exams. If you'd like to send email, please make sure to send it from your UBmail account and prefix the subject line with [CSE 350]. Piazza is the preferred method of communication.
• No mandatory textbook.
• Optional textbook:
  
  • Database System Concepts, Seventh Edition, by Abraham Silberschatz and Henry Korth and S. Sudarshan. (also available at library)
• We will use minsky.cse.buffalo.edu for programming, debugging, testing and grading. See Programming Assignment 0 for details.
• Grades for assignments and exams will be posted on UB Learns.
• Slides will be posted on this website. There will be no lecture recordings.
• Important dates:
  
  • Add/Drop Deadline: 1/28/2026
  • Midterm exam: 3/5/2026, 3:40 PM - 5:40 PM, Norton 213 (in class)
  • Last day to resign from the course: 4/14/2026
  • Final exam: 3/12/2026, 3:40 PM - 5:40 PM, Norton 213.
  • Assignment due dates: see below
• Exam conflicts: You must attend the mid-term and final exams on the scheduled time. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer alternative time for mid-term exams due to the limited availability of classrooms. You may request an alternative date/time for final exam if you have final exam conflicts as defined here, and you MUST notify the instructor by 2/4/2026 (through a Piazza private message or email).
  We may not be able to accomodate your request if you do not notify the instructor within the first two weeks of the semester. The altenertive exam date will be communicated to you about 2 weeks before the final exam week, and usually will be after the last lecture. You may still opt for the original date at any time. Please notify us at least one day before the alternative exam date.
• Link to the full syllabus document PDF syllabus.

Course Requirements

• In-person attendance to both lectures and recitations are required. There will be no recording or live-streaming of the lectures and recitations. Please bring a laptop, a pen and a calculator to class. If you do not have a laptop, you may request a loaner laptop from the library or reach out to the instructor for help.
• There will be 4 programming assignments in C++17 (Projects 1 - 4). Each programming assignment builds on the previous programming assignment's solution. To help you catch up in case your solution has defects, we will provide solution binaries for prior programming assignments which can be linked to your code. We will walk you through the starter code of programming assignments and cover useful programming tips during recitation.
• Some of the lectures or recitations will have in-class tutorial and tasks on programming assignments. Typically, there will be a checkpoint after that and you must make submissions during the lecture or recitation. You will earn partial credits for checkpoint submissions (including credits for passing tests and making the submission). Late submission is not allowed for checkpoints (see late policy for more details).
• Each programming assignment will also have a final deadline, by which you need to submit the final version of your code. If there's a test that your code failed during a checkpoint but passed during the final test, you will still earn the corresponding credit.
• There will be no take-home written assignments.
• There will be random in-class quizzes in the lectures or recitations. Each quiz will have a few questions and you will have 20 minutes to complete. You must be in person to complete and submit your answerrs. We do not accept electronic submission and no electronics except a calculator are allowed, so please make sure to bring a pen and a calculator when you come to classes.
• We have a mid-term exam and a final exam. They are both open-book, but you may only bring paper-copy of the course slides, the quiz solutions, the optional textbook, and your own lecture notes (no page limit). You may not use any electronic devices except a calculator.
• Academic Integrity Policy (The TL;DR version):   [back to top]
  1. You must independently develop the solution for quizzes and programming assignments without collaboration with anyone (including any classmate or friend).
  2. Generally, you should not discuss with anyone about any details in your assignments, with the exception that you are encouraged to have a public discussion during lecture/recitation or over Piazza as a public post for clarifying concepts. In the public discussion, you should not the details of your solution (e.g., proof steps, code). When in doubt about what is allowed/disallowed, please reach out to the instructor.
  3. You may not plagiarize others' work. Paraphrasing or deriving code from code from elsewhere is also considered as plagiarism.
  4. You may not use any generative AI software (e.g., ChatGPT) for any purpose in this class. You should not look for direct solutions on search engines, online Q&A websites, tutoring services.
  5. That said, you may use any files/examples/tutorials provided by us. More explicitly, you may use any of the following resources (with proper citation/attribution in your solution):
     • Any code/examples/slides/textbook posted on this website or provided during class.
     • Any C++ examples and references from the cppreference, cplusplus, learncpp (excluding the comments).
     • Any library examples and references for Abseil, and GoogleTest
     • Any syscall examples and references from the Linux system manual page (i.e., man(1)).
  6. Following the CSE Academic Integrity Policy, all violations will be reported to Office of Academic Integrity (OAI). All students involved will receive an F grade. Additional information about the University Academic Integrity Policy and Procedures can be found at:
     • Undergraudate Academic Integrity Policy
     • Undergraduate Academic Integrity Procedure
  
  Please review and follow the more detailed academic integrity policy in the PDF syllabus.
• Late submission policy: You have up to five grace days in total across all the programming. In addition, you may only use at most two grace days for the final submission of each programming assignment. No grace day is allowed for intermediate checkpoints of the projects. There is no penalty for late submissions during the allowed grace period. However, no credit will be given if you make a late submission that falls outside the allowed grace period.
  It is your own responsibility to keep track of the number of grace days used. Whenever feasible, programming assignments may still be graded even if you do not have available grace days, and the feedback and grades will be posted as is. However, you will see a negative adjustment that deducts your received project grade after the initial grades are posted, if your submissions are made outside the allowed grace period.

Grading

• Programming assignments: 50%
• Quizzes: 20%
• Midterm exam: 15%
• Final exam: 15%

Please see PDF syllabus for the mapping between numeric score and letter grades.

Course Schedule

Hint: If you find the last update date of a slide deck is later than the one you previously downloaded and you opened the slides within the browser, you may want to force a refresh using Ctrl + F5.

The following schedule is tentative and may be adjusted throughout the semester.

Lectures

Programming Assignments

Accessibility Resources

If you have any disability which requires reasonable accommodations to enable you to participate in this course, please contact the Office of Accessibility Resources in 60 Capen Hall, 716-645-2608. The office will provide you with information and review appropriate arrangements for reasonable accommodations, which can be found on the web at this link. Please also notify the instructor as soon as possible to make reasonable arrangement early.