I took this class during Spring 2020 so it was online. Professor John Cho did a remarkable job by showing plenty of examples, responding to questions in the Zoom chat and on Piazza. I opted to take this P/NP so I did not take the exams. The projects were fair and felt like they addressed useful knowledge. I enjoyed his class and (at least without exams) would recommend it to everyone!

He must have gotten worse than he was in the past, because class with him has been terrible, despite excellent reviews. CS 3400 is a terrible classroom to understand professors in, but even then I think his lectures aren't the best. Every sentence he says is said in exactly the same way, with the same intonation at the beginning and end of the sentence, which makes it hard to differentiate between pointless digression and useful information. His curriculum is entirely different than *real* databases classes (MIT, Stanford, Berks) because it focuses on specific characteristics of databases and their implementations rather than the concepts governing database design. His tests this year were way harder than every other year for some reason (I checked previous midterms and finals) and the specs are terrible. Often, questions on Piazza will be treated as gospel later on when the TAs are grading the projects, so if you don't read every Piazza post, you may potentially screw something up. Worse yet, everyone gets great grades on everything, but if you happen to be the one person who misread the spec, you often go down 2 letter grades per mistake. All in all, I would recommend taking it with the other professor while simultaneously taking a *real* databases course via MIT OCW, Coursera, or (if you want to focus more on implementation) Berkeley's database systems course site.

Pretty interesting and useful class. I would say Professor Cho did a great job teaching this class and all the projects are well designed and fun, although some of them are pretty time consuming. (project 3, 4)

In some sense, this course is very important, and John teach fantastic well in web application. The homework is a wonderful excise if you prepared to find a related job after you get your degree. I took this course, and I'm very satisfied with it. After that, while I have an interview related to web programming, all questions can be learned via these course. I will suggest everyone should take this course.

However, it's not easy A in his class. You must perform perfect in every homework, and do a outstanding test at final. Otherwise, you might get an B+ or A- even you work harder.

I took CS 143 and CS 144 with him.
I absolutely loved him!!
He is a great prof and cares about his students.
Chu Cheng and Young were our TA's and they were really good too!!
His projects are awesome and have helped me get internships at Yahoo and Microsoft.
We make a mini IMDB web app in 143 and a legit Ebay Web app in 144.
His tests were hard but i had past exams(he repeats them) so pretty much aced them.
Go to lecture guys, it will help.
And take John Cho you will have a great time.

professor cho is a very good professor. granted, databases are not too difficult, but he explains all the concepts very clearly. the projects are interesting because you get to apply what you learned in class. most people get a perfect score on the projects, so your grade is based entirely on the midterm and final. this class would probably qualify as an easy cs elective.

John is definitely the best CS professor I've had in my 4 years here. He is genuinely concerned about getting his point across to everyone in the class, even if it means taking a few minutes to explain to that one straggler. He also prepares very relevant examples before class and explains them very well. His projects are actually *fun* to do, and the tests, while featuring some trick questions, are very doable with an average amount of preparation time.

He's only 29 years old and full of enthusiasm. Take him while he still loves to teach and doesn't get caught up in tenure seeking like some of the old, short, grumpy gnomes (I'm not naming names) in the department.

His homework and projects are very easy so almost everyone gets full credit. He is more project oriented, so if you just want lots of theory, pick another professor. Finals and midterms were not too difficult.

He is concerned about the students and explains stuff clearly. Please, he speaks good english so dont be concern about his accent. He gives 30% As and 40% Bs. So thats not too bad. If you want to do well, attend his lectures. PS hes in no hurry to leave after lectures, so if you have questions that the best time to ask.

all around good professor. database itself is a very fun class. the projects are fun to do.

in total he gave 4 projects that builds up on one another. the first three are very easy. the last one you usually have to build a mini database website. in spring 05 we did movie database, so basically we were building a site similar to iMDB. i spent about 7 hours on it, and knowing this is a cs class, that isn't too bad at all.

as for the exams, they were pretty tough, but still relatively easy compared to other cs classes. but if you study and do the hw you should be fine.

Great professor. He really cares about student learning. He is also very available for office hours and happy to answer students' questions. His lectures are very valuable, so don't miss them. The examples he does and his explanations are worth it.

As for the grading, it's pretty reasonable. 30% or so get A's and A-'s and 40% get B's. The project is fun and not extremely difficult.