The key challenge of the information society is to turn data into information, information into knowledge, knowledge into value. This has become increasingly complex. Data comes in larger volumes, diverse shapes, from different sources. Data is more heterogeneous and less structured than forty years ago. Nevertheless, it still needs to be processed fast, with support for complex operations.

This course is part of the series of database lectures offered to all ETH departments, together with Information Systems for Engineers. It introduces the most recent advances in the database field: how do we scale storage and querying to Petabytes of data, with trillions of records? How do we deal with heterogeneous data sets? How do we deal with alternate data shapes like trees and graphs?

This course gives an introduction to information retrieval with a focus on text documents and unstructured data.Main topics comprise document modelling, various retrieval techniques, indexing techniques, query frameworks, optimization, evaluation and feedback.

This course provides the basics of relational databases from the perspective of the user.We will discover why tables are so incredibly powerful to express relations, learn the SQL query language, and how to make the most of it. The course also covers support for data cubes (analytics).