Honestly I think this course gets more hate then it deserves due to everyone's dislike of group projects. A group project absolutely makes sense for this course due to the exposure of git workflows which you may not get exposure to elsewhere (such as if you are in OMSA). Supposedly this course will be getting some rework in the semesters to come, so this might be dated for future semesters.

Overall, I think this course is pretty good and only have a few painpoints.

Pros:

• Exposure to a diverse student group - as you may have students with experience with several different technologies (python vs typescript, frontend, vs backend) and different programs (OMSA, OMSCS, OMSC).
• In depth knowledge of how databases work

Cons:

• May have trouble with group teamwork.
• Some material is only covered by the book which is difficult to read (esp. if you have ADHD...)
• Plenty of project information isn't covered by the specification and is instead revealed by Piazza questions
• Grading structure makes getting an A difficult, but easy to expect a B

Advice to Students:

• Use practice exams to study, review office hours
• Understand what sections of the book will be fair game on the exam
• Review answers (or ask questions) on Piazza
• Try to form a diverse group project and use git workflows (separate branches and merge your work, to prevent duplicated work)

Feedback to Faulty:

• Provide more detailed specifications that won't require so much follow up on Piazza
• Rework Exam 4 - the portions dealing with disk space calculations is archaic and not productive (if my undergrad physics course provided equations, I think a masters which should realize no job is going to have you manually calculate HDD disk space in an era of SSDs and NVMes without Google)
• This course can also be incredibly difficult to get an A due to the grading structure - extra credit would be nice.