TUM is the perfect place to become a database systems expert. Our university offers the largest selection of courses covering all the different aspects of databases. Whether you’re more of a low-level C++ hacker or more into theoretically proving the correctness of locking schemes for transaction isolation, there’s something for everyone.

Chairs

The chairs you usually want to be looking at for database specific courses are:

• Chair for Database Systems (Prof. Kemper, Prof. Giceva)
• Chair for Data Science and Engineering (Prof. Neumann)
• Chair for Decentralized Information Systems and Data Management (Prof. Leis)

Foundational Courses

If you just want to get more of an overview over different topics in database systems, also on the application of them, after taking GDB (or a similar introductory database lecture from another university) you should take Implementation of Database Systems (Einsatz und Realisierung von Datenbanksystemen) which is kind of a continuation of GDB. But be aware that its taught in German.

For getting into the internals, we generally recommend to take the course Database Systems on Modern CPU Architectures (Datenbanksysteme und moderne CPU-Architekturen) first if possible. The course is taught in the summer semester every year. That doesn’t mean that you should be holding back on starting your database internals journey in the winter semester. Almost every database related course can be taken with little prior skills or knowledge other than GDB. You can also take other database courses in parallel in the summer semester.

Specialized Courses

Other than the foundational courses, there’s a lot of other courses focusing on different specific subtopics. As you probably know, courses at TUM are categorized into lectures, seminars and practicals.

Lectures

To help you find interesting lectures for your personal interests, we’ve grouped the database related courses into 4 ’tracks’. There’s no real order in which we recommend you take the courses within a track.

Seminars and Practicals

Here’s a visualization of a small selection of courses you can take and the order we suggest you take them in (again, it’s also possible to not follow this order). Note that, since seminars and practicals are usually limited to a small number of students, there’s many more than the ones shown here that you can choose from. The offering usually changes from semester to semester. Just because a course is not shown on this page, doesn’t mean we recommend taking it any less than the ones shown here. Be aware that most practicals and also many lecture-exercises will be using C++ so having some experience with it is recommended.

Get Help with Curriculum Planning

If you have any questions about the courses or need help with planning your curriculum, feel free to reach out to any of us personally or via our contact mail (contact@tumuchdata.club). One of our events is the perfect opportunity to chat to us and other students about which courses to take.