Daniel Abadi | PlanetTerp

Information	Review
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A Anonymous 02/18/2025	I never seriously thought I was going to fail a class until I took this final, despite going into the exam with an A-. The course was unnecessarily difficult with questions designed to trick you (and Abadi relishing in that). During the reading quizzes, I spent more time wondering whether Abadi was trying to trick me than the question itself. I have never hated a class or a professor more. The content itself is not incredibly difficult but Abadi makes it impossible to understand it. If you have any other option, take it (especially Herve). If you don’t, it won’t be the end of your degree, but it will be incredibly frustrating and hard.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 01/24/2025	I think a LOT of the reviews below saw his high reviews before last semester (that have gone down since) and thought this would be an easier class to skate through. Prof Abadi is incredibly knowledgeable about databases and it shows. This guy wants his students to learn, and if you want to do well in this class, you will have to. The biggest qualm I have with this class is that the textbook can be confusing/quite boring at times. As an extension of this, the reading quizzes based on them can get a little challenging, especially as you cover DBMS internals towards the 2nd half of the semester (though these are a pretty small part of your end grade). However, from my experience, his lectures/slides covering the info again really ironed out everything for my understanding. You will have to come to class to answer clicker questions, but most are simple and he usually gives credit for most wrong answers. Even if you picked an answer that received no credit, you could defend your thought process and he'd usually be nice enough to mark it correct anyway. Projects 3 and 4 are not trivial by any means, but I didn't find them devastatingly hard. The midterm was a bit challenging, but nothing compared to the final. You will have to study your butt off for the final, but if you can put in the time to really understand everything (mostly B trees and the DBMS algos), it's very doable. And that learning will most likely stick. Overall, I think this class is dragged the most down by the admittedly boring textbook. Maybe changing reading quizzes to be due after you learn the content in the lecture would be beneficial for this, but I'm not really sure. That all being said, if you read textbooks well and strive to truly learn in your classes, I don't think you'll regret taking this. You will have to work hard, but if you are used to doing that to excel in your other classes I wouldn't view this as some insane challenge. It's definitely been the most valuable topic I've learned, maybe just behind OS.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/19/2025	this class was absolutely atrocious. the participation quizzes were not in fact graded on participation/completion, but rather on accuracy. the weekly readings are tedious and dense, and the reading quizzes themselves are a monstrosity. all of the projects are taken from another university, so the codebase is super deep and complex. there is very little guidance on implementing the required methods, and the difficulty of the projects do not match the information learned from the reading quizzes. onto the next: exams. the most vile questions are cooked up to test every single edge case of our knowledge. algorithms are confusingly modified to test if we have a master's level of understanding of databases, and the questions are specifically tailored to trip us up. the other reviews below can confirm this, abadi seems to find great joy in this. cool class and important concepts, but i did not anticipate this class to be the hardest class i have ever taken at my university. truly tragic when trying to load balance your schedule and this abomination of a class appears out of nowhere.
Daniel Abadi Expecting a B- Anonymous 01/05/2025	The exams are really hard but he curves them. The final literally made me cry though...
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 01/01/2025	This was the most difficult class I've ever taken at UMD, and I do not know why it was necessary for it to be this way. The participation quizzes in lecture are grading on accuracy, the reading quizzes during the week are difficult, and the exams are absolutely brutal. Avoid this professor at all costs and take another semester to actually enjoy learning about databases instead of tearing your hair out.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/23/2024	So so difficult, the exams are brutal and he genuinely enjoys making hard questions for trip us up. Class is not organized, projects are super hard, and the reading quizzes are also super hard.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/23/2024	I agree that the other reviews have been too harsh. My impression of the class is that the workload is high, but you will learn a lot. I felt that the grading was lenient despite the high workload. The majority of the workload comes from the reading homeworks before each class. They are advertised to be 1.5 hours, but I regularly spent more than that on them. They are also not easy, and you can’t expect to get all the questions right. The clicker questions are similar to the reading homeworks, but they are more lenient since multiple answers can be correct. Unfortunately, I noticed that after doing the reading homeworks, the lectures were a bit stale since they mostly rehashed the content covered in the homeworks. The 4 projects have one of the most lenient late penalties I’ve ever seen, with 2.5% off per day late. Overall they were not too bad, comparable to the workload of CMSC420 projects. The last 2 projects were different since they used an established codebase. I spent a lot of time on those projects jumping around the codebase and trying to figure out what was going on. The exams were challenging and similar to the reading homeworks and clicker questions. The final exam was surprising compared to other finals in that there were almost no “gimmes” that I could answer quickly and move on. Instead of asking “do you remember this definition/formula/question”, most of them looked like “can you use the underlying concept and apply it to new situations”. For me the HW and clicker questions, along with the practice exams, were the best way to prepare. Because of that, I think you gotta lock in the entire semester, more so than other courses, to be able to digest and understand the questions at a reasonable pace. I don’t think cramming by reading through the slides and memorizing formulas would be very successful for these exams. Overall, I’d say this is one of the harder CS electives out there. The ceiling for workload is high in that there’s a lot of content and you can end up spending a lot of time on it. Even without reaching that ceiling, I think it’s possible to get a good grade with the curves.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/22/2024	Pros: - Great lectures and slides. - Projects 1 and 2 are easy and fun. Projects 3 and 4 are very hard as we have to add additional features to Berkeley's codebase, but they are very useful for real-life applications. Cons: - Required attendance through clicker questions. - Lectures are not recorded. - Does not post answers for the midterm + doesn't post the questions nor answers of the final after they are graded. - Flipped classroom (you have to read the textbook and take a quiz on readings of concepts we have never learned in class. These quizzes are quite difficult but only count for 5% of your grade). - Not enough practice questions for the midterm and final (the only practice material is the reading quizzes). - Really low curve. The midterm median grade was curved to ~83%, and the final grade to 72.7%. The final could have been curved more, considering it counted for 35% of your grade. No other curves other than midterm & final. My main problem with this class: The textbook readings are very time-intensive and difficult, with very little learning occurring. They were overall a massive waste of time. Professor Abadi should flip the ordering of the reading quizzes to be done after we cover those concepts in class. Also, the lectures were a big waste of time. I could have learned much more in less time if they were recorded so I could watch them at home at 2x speed and hit pause. Easy to zone out during lectures. Verdict: CMSC424 is a very useful class for software engineering. Definitely take the class. If you're stuck with Professor Abadi, you'll still learn the course content well, but you could probably optimize your time & grade better with another professor.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/21/2024	While I would say the class was a pretty positive experience for me, I definitely understand the sentiment of other reviewers from Fall 2024. Abadi's class definitely was one of the hardest classes I took at UMD, which caught me completely off guard -- I had taken 424 mainly because i was juggling a few other technical courses this sem and heard 424 was one of the easier 400's. 424 w/ Abadi ended up being the hardest class out of my entire schedule. He is one of the smartest people I've ever seen, and you can tell he has a rich knowledge and passion for databases. He really wants you to understand the material, and goes to great lengths to ensure that there are little to no gaps in your understanding. That being said, I think his standards for students are very, VERY high. While he's a smart guy and clearly knows what he's talking about, he talks extremely fast during lectures. Like it was almost impossible for myself or any of my friends to pick up on what he was saying. This made a large portion of the class reliant on self-studying, which was also difficult. We had to read the textbook before each class and do reading quizzes which were at time very, very difficult but in hindsight really made the class more rewarding. They helped me stay ontrack, and alongside the projects, made the class very useful. The TA's for Abadi were amazing, like the best TAs I've seen for any class. Shoutout Pooja and Peter, they really did a good job in answering questions on Piazza, and definitely were really helpful for debugging projects in office hours. I'm ngl, even though this was one of the harder courses at UMD, I think its very useful, and if you want to really learn the concepts well, take it with Abadi. Hands-down a more demanding prof, but I guarantee you will learn far more than taking this with another prof.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/20/2024	I think some of the reviews are being a bit unfair to him, and I'd say he strikes a good balance between making the course useful and challenging without the experience becoming completely demoralizing. The reading quizzes were often pretty difficult, and require a strong understanding of the fairly dry textbook readings. But they were a small percentage of our overall grade, so as long as you consistently tried on them, it wasn't going to impact your grade that much. I still think the quizzes were useful to tease the concepts that would be taught in class. They were also helpful in keeping me on track with the course material throughout the semester (which I presume was the point of creating them). His lectures are not the most engaging by any means, but they were still helpful in clearing up things I didn't understand from the reading quizzes. In addition, almost every lecture had graded clicker questions, which were annoying at times, but I have to admit that they helped me stay focused in lecture. The projects were not easy, but still pretty manageable and I didn't think any of them were excessively long or difficult. For the last two projects I do think some instructions were a bit barebones, and I would have saved some time if they were more clear. The exams were relatively hard and raw scores were low (averages in 50-60s), but they were both curved enough that class averages were reasonable (~85% on the midterm and ~75% on the final). He was also nice in rounding up students' grades that were near cutoffs at the end of the semester. The course content was pretty interesting and you will learn a decent amount about databases from it. The structure and material of this class forced me to take ownership of my learning. But it's clear he didn't design this course to fail a bunch of students nor did he make the class so difficult to understand that it prevented us getting anything out of it. If you're at least mildly interested in databases I'd recommend taking the course with him.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a C- Anonymous 12/20/2024	Taking 424 with Professor Abadi has been an experience. Not very pleasant at all and I do not recommend it. As a person, he is very approachable and kind but the way he teaches this class is an absolute nightmare. - Quizzes on textbook chapters graded for accuracy that are very hard and confusing before going over any of the content in class. - Lecture quizzes that are also graded for accuracy and hard - Projects straight from hell with how confusing it is - Brutal exams even after the curve. Partial credit is offered but many of the questions are short answer and partial isn't given there. Curve does not really help. - Poor communication as the ELMS page is dead and Piazza doesn't have any reminders. Rather everything is done through an email list. - Not enough study material for the exams and doesn't post the answer key for the exam that you took In summary Professor Abadi's 424 is not an experience that I recommend to anyone who values their GPA and mental health.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A Anonymous 12/19/2024	I'd say others are too critical of him... homeworks were fine and exams were challengingly fun.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/17/2024	The review below me speaks volumes. This class was actually one of the worst ones I have ever taken at UMD, and I signed up under the pretense that it would be a fun, interesting class where I could focus on the actual content instead of spending hours on studying trivial details. Just to preface, I'm also a double major and my STAT420 course was literally so much easier than this class, and I would take that exam five times over instead of needing to study for this one. Here is a list of why this course is poorly structured. 1. The material at the beginning is super easy and ridiculously difficult at the end, so the split of the content is hard to keep up with. 2. The reading quizzes for each section in the textbook are graded for accuracy, and so are the in lecture participation quizzes. I get why the reading quizzes are on accuracy, but truly the in lecture ones are for participation so why is it possible to miss participation while I'm sitting in lecture? 3. The reading quizzes themselves are also super hard, with things that are tested that are not covered in the edge cases in the textbook. Why Abadi made it worse 1. He designs exams and projects that are egregiously difficult. The projects are based off on UC Berkeley's previous projects, and the codebase is so deep and complex and it feels like nobody knows what the project is fully doing. The first project was literally based on SQL with us learning the basics, but the project was asking us to write complex queries on things that we a. had not learned! and b. things that weren't in the dense textbook! 2. Every question on the exams was designed to be a gotcha question and he would take genuine joy in front of the class going over his carefully curated questions to trip you up. 3. The exams are literally designed for you to fail, and he also lets you know this very proudly on his announcements. What's the point of making an exam so insanely difficult and then curving it afterwards? I feel that this does not let you properly show your knowledge as it's almost all or nothing on these insanely hard questions, not a fully comprehensive exam where you can test the knowledge that you have been taught. For every question, you have to take what you learned and then manipulate it in some way that requires a deep knowledge of the underworkings of the algorithm (apologies Abadi for not making this class the center of my life, god forbid I'm taking other courses right now as well). 4. This guy is so, so smart and one of the leading minds in databases but he forgets that not everyone has a history of getting a PhD from MIT, made a commercialized database, and taught at Yale University for a decade.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/17/2024	Presumptuously delightful professor and course. Learned delectably and feel leagues better as a student after going through it. Ignore the really harsh review posted previously (I’m certain it was grumpy goober Smurf). Signing off xoxo - Nayraá LeTap
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/17/2024	same as below… god forbid i don’t eat breathe sleep databases,…. biggest sigh. diabolical course, put me through it this semester
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/17/2024	Professor Abadi was pretty pleasant throughout the semester as a lecturer. Unfortunately, the final exam felt convoluted, and I felt that many of the questions were his attempt to think up new questions that weren't covered throughout the practice midterm/final or during the semester as some "gotcha" moment. Regardless, could have been a skill issue on my part. Other than that, I think the projects were bearable but definitely on the difficult side. I felt that projects 3 and 4 weren't that useful and could use some modifications to feel more connected to what was tested during exams since they were weighted so heavily. My final issue was mostly the textbook usage. I felt that the textbook was extremely dense and convoluted in its explanations, so I wish there was less emphasis on reading the textbook before every reading quiz, and that more of the content was taught through lecture alone. I'd give him a 2.5 star but that option is not available, and I feel that Professor Abadi was more deserving of 3 stars rather than 2 stars. Overall, not a bad professor, just expect that your grade will be easily decided by the final since it was weighed 35%. Goodbye, my A.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/17/2024	Professor Abadi is a nice person, but this course was far more difficult and time-consuming than it needed to be. To overview: - Reading quizzes every week which require 1-2 hrs reading, and cover difficult scenarios not discussed in the textbook - Lectures rarely cover the depth of the content covered in the textbook - No lecture recordings, but posts slides (which aren't fully enough) - Clicker questions in lecture - Exams which are intentionally difficult, but come with a curve (1 midterm worth 20%, 1 final worth 35%) - 4 projects (2 are SQL, 2 are copied from Berkeley), the last 2 were very difficult and required a significant amount of time (10+ hrs) While Abadi works to challenge you as a student and give you a deep knowledge of the field, he also makes the course quite time-consuming and stressful. Would be much better if he devoted more time to developing better lectures and relying less on the textbook, and also if exams and projects were fairer and better resembled the workload of a 3 credit class.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/17/2024	Nice guy, but wow was this class hard. Gives very time consuming reading quizzes every week, which are also difficult and cover scenarios not discussed in the textbook. Lectures are solid, but are not recorded, and still do not cover every detail we need to know from the textbook. Exams have very poor averages, but come with a curve (for instance, he added 10 points to everyone's original midterm score). Gave 4 projects, 2 of which were SQL, and 2 which were based of CS courses from Berkeley. The final two projects were very time consuming, and required very thorough knowledge of the content. Overall, this course gets you to learn the content somewhat well, but at the expense of a LOT of time, stress, and possibly your GPA. If you want an easy course this is not the one.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/16/2024	Sigh.... Where do I even begin? This class has been the biggest pain in my side all semester, and may be the reason why I need to take an extra semester to graduate. Professor Abadi himself isn't a bad guy at all-- he's kind and understanding, and his lectures aren't that bad, but all those things mean nothing if he plans on purposely giving students constant stress and headaches with his class. Here's a list of reasons why I personally hated every second of being in this class (and why you may as well): - He assigns textbook readings to learn class content before he teaches it in lecture. I have never once agreed that this is a good way to teach any course, ever. - He assigns reading quizzes before class and lecture quizzes during class, both of which are graded for ACCURACY. So essentially if you found anything in the textbook confusing on any given night you can forget about getting your participation points that day. - His projects are wayyyyyyyyy too complicated. The first project on basic queries should have been clear and straightforward, since we were only about 2 weeks into SQL at that point, yet all of the queries were something the lines of: "create a query to find passengers between the ages of 16 to 44 who took flights with American Airlines in January or Delta in May where the passengers also flew with at least 3 other passenger above the age of 60 that normally fly with an airline other than Delta or American" (students will vouch that this isn't much of an exaggeration). Don't get me started on the B+ tree project, it was easily the most unnecessary information overload I've ever had to deal with. If I ever want to feel the feeling of being completely and utterly overwhelmed again, I'm just gonna read over that project again. - He purposely makes his tests hard (and tells you). He claims it's because he cares about you and that there will be a curve and that we shouldn't worry about our grades too much, so I walked out of our midterm thinking I got a B+ after a decent attempt and ended up getting a 63 after a 15 point curve. He also claimed that he tried to design it to give as much partial credit as possible, but I got all 0's on a series of 8 short answer questions that didn't even have options for partial credit. - He doesn't post announcements on ELMS for critical information, nor basically anywhere for that matter. He has a piazza, but not often will you find a helpful disclaimer or reminder that is clearly marked. Don't take this course with Abadi, and if you do, you better hope you aren't signed up for any other difficult courses, or you will be pulling hairs out of your head all semester.
Daniel Abadi Anonymous 12/15/2024	this class was super difficult, and not meant for anyone without a deep burning passion for databases. exams are engineered for you to score low
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/15/2024	super difficult for no reason
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B Anonymous 12/14/2024	I'm not sure why this guy designs his class so that people score low on everything. He says that there will be a curve, but studying for an exam which you know has intentionally been designed to trip you up and have an average score of a 60 is so demoralizing and takes the interest out of any of the material. This could've been a fun and cool course, but instead you're focused on memorizing every single detail from the genuine 600 pages of content from the textbook that is on the exam.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/14/2024	The projects and the content of the course are very interesting; I think Abadi does a good job of making sure you know the material (as long as you put in the normal amount of effort to learn course content) through his reading quiz questions and projects. However, he is not a very good lecturer. Definitely knowledgeable about the topics.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/12/2024	such a hard class for no reason, 100% wait for another semester to take it with a different professor. this course would be interesting otherwise
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 12/11/2024	Very good course overall. Abadi is a good guy and cares about his students. The midterm and final are moderately difficult, but slightly curved depending on if the class doesn't do poorly on them. Projects are not easy so start early, and go to office hours because the TAs are awesome. He has a required reading and reading quiz before most classes which is annoying, and attendance to class is mandatory which he checks with in class quizzes. Not the easiest of classes, not the hardest either, and you get a lot out of it.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B- Anonymous 12/11/2024	This class is so ridiculously hard for no reason
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 12/11/2024	He's probably the smartest professor at this school and his credentials speak for his itself, but this does not mean that he's a good professor at all. He expects all of his students to catch up with his level of understanding, and this means that the reading quizzes cover niche edge cases that are not even covered in the textbook. He genuinely enjoys creating hard questions on the exams (he will smile and giggle in class going "I really enjoyed this one"), and the material is genuinely so difficult and dense to go through. This class used to be easy and fun with Herve, but it is my hardest class this semester despite going through it for stat420!!!
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 12/10/2024	Super nice guy and a really great teacher. His version of this class is fairly demanding; a (usually challenging) reading quiz due before every lecture, in class clicker questions, 4 pretty difficult projects, and some of the most difficult exams i've ever taken. I found the textbook for this class to be a slog to get through, especially towards the end of the semester when the material gets very complicated. Nonetheless, the professor is an extemely knowledgeable and effective teacher, so if you're even somewhat interested in the subject you will probably like this class. If you find you have no interest whatsoever . . . you'll hate it.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 12/03/2024	I think we need to find a better way to teach students than just buying a textbook and reading off the textbook all the time. It's also a very very boring textbook and I think the author is trying to be the most boring they can be. There's also discrepancies between the slideshows and the textbook. The last two projects took way longer than they should have just because you have to look around to understand all of the surrounding code and the project description does a very poor job of giving context. So really, I spent more time reading and trying to understand code I didn't write than actually implementing the algorithms in class. Finally, I think the reading quizzes could be improved upon, I know they require extra thinking, but if that's the case maybe they should have two attempts each with the attempts showing what you missed. The point is to learn some material before coming to class, instead, it feels like time wasted after reading the boring textbook for 2 hours and getting a 50%.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 11/11/2024	He's really knowledgeable about databases and his topics, but he is the type of professor to enjoy creating hard exams and projects. When reviewing his exam where the average score was very low (he also said several times in class that the exam was "not trivial" with a smug smile every time), he seemed proud of the toughest questions that he concocted. I think this course has traditionally been on the easier side, but I'm not sure what happened here.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A+ juiceman 08/26/2023	1. Did you find the exams and major assignments fair? · The reading quizzes are connected to the readings, but some questions can be tricky and require close attention. · Clicker questions are free as long as someone provides a reasonable justification during class. · The midterm exam was fair. The final exam was challenging but had a significant curve (20%). · The projects were manageable, taking about 10 hours each. The last two projects are based on Berkeley's database class and require understanding the existing codebase before applying class concepts. · The breakdown was projects (32%), midterm (20%), final (32%), clickers (8%), and reading quizzes (8%). — 2. Did you feel the professor had reasonable expectations for the students in the course overall? · Yes. There were reading quizzes almost every week. Clicker questions were challenging but thought-provoking. Exams were reasonable. Participating during class and answering non-trivial questions was expected. Fair application of what we cover in the textbook and class. — 3. Did you like the professor's teaching style? · I enjoyed the professor's teaching style as he provided clear guidance on how to prepare for and succeed in the course. · He offered ample practice problems, gave advice on studying for exams, and emphasized hands-on practice. The midterm heavily focused on the projects. · What I particularly enjoyed was the professor's dedication to creating a positive classroom culture. He made an effort to personalize interactions by remembering and using our names. He encouraged questions and fostered discussions. It was evident that he cared deeply about the subject matter and his students. His enthusiasm was reflected in his attire as well, as he wore a suit to every class. Very caring. — 4. Was the workload appropriate for the number of credits? · The workload was appropriate but slightly heavy, considering 17 reading quizzes (approximately 1.5 hours each), 4 projects (each taking 10 hours), and 2 exams (requiring 10 hours of study each). — 5. Was this course valuable or a waste of time? · This course is highly valuable, especially for those interested in software engineering and data science/machine learning. Interacting with databases is a crucial skill in various careers. He emphasized making 424 practical rather than overly theoretical. · The first half of course covers advanced SQL, ER diagrams, schemas, normalization, and database building components. The second half focuses on theoretical aspects, considering memory constraints and algorithm costs. Cost considerations of queries was one of my favorite topics. B-trees are a significant topic as well. · Projects 3 and 4 provide excellent practice working with large existing codebases. · The TA's (Pooja, Cuong) contribute to the positive learning experience. — 6. How much support did you receive throughout the semester (office hours, extra resources, etc.)? · Four hours of TA office hours were available each week, and the TAs were responsive to Piazza and willing to provide assistance with code privately. · The professor had office hours by appointment (after class) and was always willing to explain clicker and reading quiz questions. · He offered a bonus project to raise project grades and had a generous project late penalty. · Three reading quizzes and three clickers were dropped. · While the professor sometimes spoke quickly and didn't record classes, the classroom culture, energy, and support were excellent. Attendance was required. — 7. TLDR Weekly reading quizzes, clicker questions, mandatory attendance, relevant concepts, fair projects and exams, exceptionally caring and intelligent professor who encourages participation during class. Decent workload, but this is my favorite CS class at UMD. I highly recommend it with Abadi.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B- Anonymous 05/29/2023	Incredibly knowledgeable about databases. Great lecturer, projects and weekly quizzes are difficult but you get all the help needed. Definitely recommend!
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting a B Anonymous 05/20/2023	Enjoyed this class with Dr Abadi. You will learn a fair amount about SQL and using DBMS properly, but even more about the in depth technical details of designing databases. The first half of the class is straightforward and fun, learning about writing SQL queries and E/R models. Midterm was pretty easy if you paid attention. The material gets very very difficult towards the end of the semester. Reading quizzes get hard as the semester goes on. The projects become very time consuming and somewhat confusing as well. As always, if you start early, they are doable. Final was egregiously hard, but Dr Abadi informed us that there was a mistake made regarding the difficulty level. A quite substantial curve was provided on the final exam. Overall, would recommend, but be ready for a moderately heavy workload at times.
Daniel Abadi CMSC624 Expecting an A+ Anonymous 04/07/2022	Abadi is the best professor I ever had and he's also the smartest person I ever seen. The lectures are very engaging and he asks a lot of non-trivial questions. Projects and homeworks are not easy, but they are well organized and you can learn a lot from them. You can tell he cares about students and the material he taught.
Daniel Abadi CMSC624 Expecting a B+ Anonymous 02/15/2022	Abadi is the best lecturer I have had at UMD, he is extremely passionate about the material and very good at explaining topics. He goes at a very fast pace but I was always able to follow along and learned more from this class than any other. Course material and exam was very difficult but if you care more about learning than grades you will really enjoy his class.
Daniel Abadi CMSC624 Expecting an A Anonymous 01/25/2022	Abadi is a genius about databases. The material was difficult and he asked questions to challenge us. The midterm was very hard but he provided a generous curve. Try to participate in class (ask questions, answer his challenge questions, demonstrate you read the papers, etc.) and you will do well.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Anonymous 07/08/2019	Pros: Nice guy Lenient grader Listens to student's concerns Easy and fun material in the beginning Cons: Extremely boring lecturer The class material is extremely boring for the most part Towards the end of the semester the material becomes very difficult
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A Anonymous 05/14/2018	Good Professor, kinda boring to listen to during lectures but the material is interesting. Willing to listen to students about concerns with the class and will actually do something to address these issues. Exams are pretty hard though, but he curves them enough.
Daniel Abadi CMSC424 Expecting an A- Anonymous 05/02/2018	Really nice and lenient grader. Exams aren't too hard

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A
Anonymous
02/18/2025

I never seriously thought I was going to fail a class until I took this final, despite going into the exam with an A-. The course was unnecessarily difficult with questions designed to trick you (and Abadi relishing in that). During the reading quizzes, I spent more time wondering whether Abadi was trying to trick me than the question itself. I have never hated a class or a professor more. The content itself is not incredibly difficult but Abadi makes it impossible to understand it. If you have any other option, take it (especially Herve). If you don’t, it won’t be the end of your degree, but it will be incredibly frustrating and hard.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
01/24/2025

I think a LOT of the reviews below saw his high reviews before last semester (that have gone down since) and thought this would be an easier class to skate through. Prof Abadi is incredibly knowledgeable about databases and it shows. This guy wants his students to learn, and if you want to do well in this class, you will have to. The biggest qualm I have with this class is that the textbook can be confusing/quite boring at times. As an extension of this, the reading quizzes based on them can get a little challenging, especially as you cover DBMS internals towards the 2nd half of the semester (though these are a pretty small part of your end grade). However, from my experience, his lectures/slides covering the info again really ironed out everything for my understanding. You will have to come to class to answer clicker questions, but most are simple and he usually gives credit for most wrong answers. Even if you picked an answer that received no credit, you could defend your thought process and he'd usually be nice enough to mark it correct anyway. Projects 3 and 4 are not trivial by any means, but I didn't find them devastatingly hard. The midterm was a bit challenging, but nothing compared to the final. You will have to study your butt off for the final, but if you can put in the time to really understand everything (mostly B trees and the DBMS algos), it's very doable. And that learning will most likely stick. Overall, I think this class is dragged the most down by the admittedly boring textbook. Maybe changing reading quizzes to be due after you learn the content in the lecture would be beneficial for this, but I'm not really sure. That all being said, if you read textbooks well and strive to truly learn in your classes, I don't think you'll regret taking this. You will have to work hard, but if you are used to doing that to excel in your other classes I wouldn't view this as some insane challenge. It's definitely been the most valuable topic I've learned, maybe just behind OS.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/19/2025

this class was absolutely atrocious. the participation quizzes were not in fact graded on participation/completion, but rather on accuracy. the weekly readings are tedious and dense, and the reading quizzes themselves are a monstrosity. all of the projects are taken from another university, so the codebase is super deep and complex. there is very little guidance on implementing the required methods, and the difficulty of the projects do not match the information learned from the reading quizzes. onto the next: exams. the most vile questions are cooked up to test every single edge case of our knowledge. algorithms are confusingly modified to test if we have a master's level of understanding of databases, and the questions are specifically tailored to trip us up. the other reviews below can confirm this, abadi seems to find great joy in this. cool class and important concepts, but i did not anticipate this class to be the hardest class i have ever taken at my university. truly tragic when trying to load balance your schedule and this abomination of a class appears out of nowhere.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
01/01/2025

This was the most difficult class I've ever taken at UMD, and I do not know why it was necessary for it to be this way. The participation quizzes in lecture are grading on accuracy, the reading quizzes during the week are difficult, and the exams are absolutely brutal. Avoid this professor at all costs and take another semester to actually enjoy learning about databases instead of tearing your hair out.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/23/2024

So so difficult, the exams are brutal and he genuinely enjoys making hard questions for trip us up. Class is not organized, projects are super hard, and the reading quizzes are also super hard.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/23/2024

I agree that the other reviews have been too harsh. My impression of the class is that the workload is high, but you will learn a lot. I felt that the grading was lenient despite the high workload. The majority of the workload comes from the reading homeworks before each class. They are advertised to be 1.5 hours, but I regularly spent more than that on them. They are also not easy, and you can’t expect to get all the questions right. The clicker questions are similar to the reading homeworks, but they are more lenient since multiple answers can be correct. Unfortunately, I noticed that after doing the reading homeworks, the lectures were a bit stale since they mostly rehashed the content covered in the homeworks. The 4 projects have one of the most lenient late penalties I’ve ever seen, with 2.5% off per day late. Overall they were not too bad, comparable to the workload of CMSC420 projects. The last 2 projects were different since they used an established codebase. I spent a lot of time on those projects jumping around the codebase and trying to figure out what was going on. The exams were challenging and similar to the reading homeworks and clicker questions. The final exam was surprising compared to other finals in that there were almost no “gimmes” that I could answer quickly and move on. Instead of asking “do you remember this definition/formula/question”, most of them looked like “can you use the underlying concept and apply it to new situations”. For me the HW and clicker questions, along with the practice exams, were the best way to prepare. Because of that, I think you gotta lock in the entire semester, more so than other courses, to be able to digest and understand the questions at a reasonable pace. I don’t think cramming by reading through the slides and memorizing formulas would be very successful for these exams. Overall, I’d say this is one of the harder CS electives out there. The ceiling for workload is high in that there’s a lot of content and you can end up spending a lot of time on it. Even without reaching that ceiling, I think it’s possible to get a good grade with the curves.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/22/2024

Pros: - Great lectures and slides. - Projects 1 and 2 are easy and fun. Projects 3 and 4 are very hard as we have to add additional features to Berkeley's codebase, but they are very useful for real-life applications. Cons: - Required attendance through clicker questions. - Lectures are not recorded. - Does not post answers for the midterm + doesn't post the questions nor answers of the final after they are graded. - Flipped classroom (you have to read the textbook and take a quiz on readings of concepts we have never learned in class. These quizzes are quite difficult but only count for 5% of your grade). - Not enough practice questions for the midterm and final (the only practice material is the reading quizzes). - Really low curve. The midterm median grade was curved to ~83%, and the final grade to 72.7%. The final could have been curved more, considering it counted for 35% of your grade. No other curves other than midterm & final. My main problem with this class: The textbook readings are very time-intensive and difficult, with very little learning occurring. They were overall a massive waste of time. Professor Abadi should flip the ordering of the reading quizzes to be done after we cover those concepts in class. Also, the lectures were a big waste of time. I could have learned much more in less time if they were recorded so I could watch them at home at 2x speed and hit pause. Easy to zone out during lectures. Verdict: CMSC424 is a very useful class for software engineering. Definitely take the class. If you're stuck with Professor Abadi, you'll still learn the course content well, but you could probably optimize your time & grade better with another professor.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/21/2024

While I would say the class was a pretty positive experience for me, I definitely understand the sentiment of other reviewers from Fall 2024. Abadi's class definitely was one of the hardest classes I took at UMD, which caught me completely off guard -- I had taken 424 mainly because i was juggling a few other technical courses this sem and heard 424 was one of the easier 400's. 424 w/ Abadi ended up being the hardest class out of my entire schedule. He is one of the smartest people I've ever seen, and you can tell he has a rich knowledge and passion for databases. He really wants you to understand the material, and goes to great lengths to ensure that there are little to no gaps in your understanding. That being said, I think his standards for students are very, VERY high. While he's a smart guy and clearly knows what he's talking about, he talks extremely fast during lectures. Like it was almost impossible for myself or any of my friends to pick up on what he was saying. This made a large portion of the class reliant on self-studying, which was also difficult. We had to read the textbook before each class and do reading quizzes which were at time very, very difficult but in hindsight really made the class more rewarding. They helped me stay ontrack, and alongside the projects, made the class very useful. The TA's for Abadi were amazing, like the best TAs I've seen for any class. Shoutout Pooja and Peter, they really did a good job in answering questions on Piazza, and definitely were really helpful for debugging projects in office hours. I'm ngl, even though this was one of the harder courses at UMD, I think its very useful, and if you want to really learn the concepts well, take it with Abadi. Hands-down a more demanding prof, but I guarantee you will learn far more than taking this with another prof.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/20/2024

I think some of the reviews are being a bit unfair to him, and I'd say he strikes a good balance between making the course useful and challenging without the experience becoming completely demoralizing. The reading quizzes were often pretty difficult, and require a strong understanding of the fairly dry textbook readings. But they were a small percentage of our overall grade, so as long as you consistently tried on them, it wasn't going to impact your grade that much. I still think the quizzes were useful to tease the concepts that would be taught in class. They were also helpful in keeping me on track with the course material throughout the semester (which I presume was the point of creating them). His lectures are not the most engaging by any means, but they were still helpful in clearing up things I didn't understand from the reading quizzes. In addition, almost every lecture had graded clicker questions, which were annoying at times, but I have to admit that they helped me stay focused in lecture. The projects were not easy, but still pretty manageable and I didn't think any of them were excessively long or difficult. For the last two projects I do think some instructions were a bit barebones, and I would have saved some time if they were more clear. The exams were relatively hard and raw scores were low (averages in 50-60s), but they were both curved enough that class averages were reasonable (~85% on the midterm and ~75% on the final). He was also nice in rounding up students' grades that were near cutoffs at the end of the semester. The course content was pretty interesting and you will learn a decent amount about databases from it. The structure and material of this class forced me to take ownership of my learning. But it's clear he didn't design this course to fail a bunch of students nor did he make the class so difficult to understand that it prevented us getting anything out of it. If you're at least mildly interested in databases I'd recommend taking the course with him.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a C-
Anonymous
12/20/2024

Taking 424 with Professor Abadi has been an experience. Not very pleasant at all and I do not recommend it. As a person, he is very approachable and kind but the way he teaches this class is an absolute nightmare. - Quizzes on textbook chapters graded for accuracy that are very hard and confusing before going over any of the content in class. - Lecture quizzes that are also graded for accuracy and hard - Projects straight from hell with how confusing it is - Brutal exams even after the curve. Partial credit is offered but many of the questions are short answer and partial isn't given there. Curve does not really help. - Poor communication as the ELMS page is dead and Piazza doesn't have any reminders. Rather everything is done through an email list. - Not enough study material for the exams and doesn't post the answer key for the exam that you took In summary Professor Abadi's 424 is not an experience that I recommend to anyone who values their GPA and mental health.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A
Anonymous
12/19/2024

I'd say others are too critical of him... homeworks were fine and exams were challengingly fun.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/17/2024

The review below me speaks volumes. This class was actually one of the worst ones I have ever taken at UMD, and I signed up under the pretense that it would be a fun, interesting class where I could focus on the actual content instead of spending hours on studying trivial details. Just to preface, I'm also a double major and my STAT420 course was literally so much easier than this class, and I would take that exam five times over instead of needing to study for this one. Here is a list of why this course is poorly structured. 1. The material at the beginning is super easy and ridiculously difficult at the end, so the split of the content is hard to keep up with. 2. The reading quizzes for each section in the textbook are graded for accuracy, and so are the in lecture participation quizzes. I get why the reading quizzes are on accuracy, but truly the in lecture ones are for participation so why is it possible to miss participation while I'm sitting in lecture? 3. The reading quizzes themselves are also super hard, with things that are tested that are not covered in the edge cases in the textbook. Why Abadi made it worse 1. He designs exams and projects that are egregiously difficult. The projects are based off on UC Berkeley's previous projects, and the codebase is so deep and complex and it feels like nobody knows what the project is fully doing. The first project was literally based on SQL with us learning the basics, but the project was asking us to write complex queries on things that we a. had not learned! and b. things that weren't in the dense textbook! 2. Every question on the exams was designed to be a gotcha question and he would take genuine joy in front of the class going over his carefully curated questions to trip you up. 3. The exams are literally designed for you to fail, and he also lets you know this very proudly on his announcements. What's the point of making an exam so insanely difficult and then curving it afterwards? I feel that this does not let you properly show your knowledge as it's almost all or nothing on these insanely hard questions, not a fully comprehensive exam where you can test the knowledge that you have been taught. For every question, you have to take what you learned and then manipulate it in some way that requires a deep knowledge of the underworkings of the algorithm (apologies Abadi for not making this class the center of my life, god forbid I'm taking other courses right now as well). 4. This guy is so, so smart and one of the leading minds in databases but he forgets that not everyone has a history of getting a PhD from MIT, made a commercialized database, and taught at Yale University for a decade.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/17/2024

Presumptuously delightful professor and course. Learned delectably and feel leagues better as a student after going through it. Ignore the really harsh review posted previously (I’m certain it was grumpy goober Smurf). Signing off xoxo - Nayraá LeTap

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/17/2024

same as below… god forbid i don’t eat breathe sleep databases,…. biggest sigh. diabolical course, put me through it this semester

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/17/2024

Professor Abadi was pretty pleasant throughout the semester as a lecturer. Unfortunately, the final exam felt convoluted, and I felt that many of the questions were his attempt to think up new questions that weren't covered throughout the practice midterm/final or during the semester as some "gotcha" moment. Regardless, could have been a skill issue on my part. Other than that, I think the projects were bearable but definitely on the difficult side. I felt that projects 3 and 4 weren't that useful and could use some modifications to feel more connected to what was tested during exams since they were weighted so heavily. My final issue was mostly the textbook usage. I felt that the textbook was extremely dense and convoluted in its explanations, so I wish there was less emphasis on reading the textbook before every reading quiz, and that more of the content was taught through lecture alone. I'd give him a 2.5 star but that option is not available, and I feel that Professor Abadi was more deserving of 3 stars rather than 2 stars. Overall, not a bad professor, just expect that your grade will be easily decided by the final since it was weighed 35%. Goodbye, my A.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/17/2024

Professor Abadi is a nice person, but this course was far more difficult and time-consuming than it needed to be. To overview: - Reading quizzes every week which require 1-2 hrs reading, and cover difficult scenarios not discussed in the textbook - Lectures rarely cover the depth of the content covered in the textbook - No lecture recordings, but posts slides (which aren't fully enough) - Clicker questions in lecture - Exams which are intentionally difficult, but come with a curve (1 midterm worth 20%, 1 final worth 35%) - 4 projects (2 are SQL, 2 are copied from Berkeley), the last 2 were very difficult and required a significant amount of time (10+ hrs) While Abadi works to challenge you as a student and give you a deep knowledge of the field, he also makes the course quite time-consuming and stressful. Would be much better if he devoted more time to developing better lectures and relying less on the textbook, and also if exams and projects were fairer and better resembled the workload of a 3 credit class.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/17/2024

Nice guy, but wow was this class hard. Gives very time consuming reading quizzes every week, which are also difficult and cover scenarios not discussed in the textbook. Lectures are solid, but are not recorded, and still do not cover every detail we need to know from the textbook. Exams have very poor averages, but come with a curve (for instance, he added 10 points to everyone's original midterm score). Gave 4 projects, 2 of which were SQL, and 2 which were based of CS courses from Berkeley. The final two projects were very time consuming, and required very thorough knowledge of the content. Overall, this course gets you to learn the content somewhat well, but at the expense of a LOT of time, stress, and possibly your GPA. If you want an easy course this is not the one.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/16/2024

Sigh.... Where do I even begin? This class has been the biggest pain in my side all semester, and may be the reason why I need to take an extra semester to graduate. Professor Abadi himself isn't a bad guy at all-- he's kind and understanding, and his lectures aren't that bad, but all those things mean nothing if he plans on purposely giving students constant stress and headaches with his class. Here's a list of reasons why I personally hated every second of being in this class (and why you may as well): - He assigns textbook readings to learn class content before he teaches it in lecture. I have never once agreed that this is a good way to teach any course, ever. - He assigns reading quizzes before class and lecture quizzes during class, both of which are graded for ACCURACY. So essentially if you found anything in the textbook confusing on any given night you can forget about getting your participation points that day. - His projects are wayyyyyyyyy too complicated. The first project on basic queries should have been clear and straightforward, since we were only about 2 weeks into SQL at that point, yet all of the queries were something the lines of: "create a query to find passengers between the ages of 16 to 44 who took flights with American Airlines in January or Delta in May where the passengers also flew with at least 3 other passenger above the age of 60 that normally fly with an airline other than Delta or American" (students will vouch that this isn't much of an exaggeration). Don't get me started on the B+ tree project, it was easily the most unnecessary information overload I've ever had to deal with. If I ever want to feel the feeling of being completely and utterly overwhelmed again, I'm just gonna read over that project again. - He purposely makes his tests hard (and tells you). He claims it's because he cares about you and that there will be a curve and that we shouldn't worry about our grades too much, so I walked out of our midterm thinking I got a B+ after a decent attempt and ended up getting a 63 after a 15 point curve. He also claimed that he tried to design it to give as much partial credit as possible, but I got all 0's on a series of 8 short answer questions that didn't even have options for partial credit. - He doesn't post announcements on ELMS for critical information, nor basically anywhere for that matter. He has a piazza, but not often will you find a helpful disclaimer or reminder that is clearly marked. Don't take this course with Abadi, and if you do, you better hope you aren't signed up for any other difficult courses, or you will be pulling hairs out of your head all semester.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/15/2024

super difficult for no reason

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B
Anonymous
12/14/2024

I'm not sure why this guy designs his class so that people score low on everything. He says that there will be a curve, but studying for an exam which you know has intentionally been designed to trip you up and have an average score of a 60 is so demoralizing and takes the interest out of any of the material. This could've been a fun and cool course, but instead you're focused on memorizing every single detail from the genuine 600 pages of content from the textbook that is on the exam.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/14/2024

The projects and the content of the course are very interesting; I think Abadi does a good job of making sure you know the material (as long as you put in the normal amount of effort to learn course content) through his reading quiz questions and projects. However, he is not a very good lecturer. Definitely knowledgeable about the topics.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/12/2024

such a hard class for no reason, 100% wait for another semester to take it with a different professor. this course would be interesting otherwise

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
12/11/2024

Very good course overall. Abadi is a good guy and cares about his students. The midterm and final are moderately difficult, but slightly curved depending on if the class doesn't do poorly on them. Projects are not easy so start early, and go to office hours because the TAs are awesome. He has a required reading and reading quiz before most classes which is annoying, and attendance to class is mandatory which he checks with in class quizzes. Not the easiest of classes, not the hardest either, and you get a lot out of it.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
12/11/2024

This class is so ridiculously hard for no reason

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
12/11/2024

He's probably the smartest professor at this school and his credentials speak for his itself, but this does not mean that he's a good professor at all. He expects all of his students to catch up with his level of understanding, and this means that the reading quizzes cover niche edge cases that are not even covered in the textbook. He genuinely enjoys creating hard questions on the exams (he will smile and giggle in class going "I really enjoyed this one"), and the material is genuinely so difficult and dense to go through. This class used to be easy and fun with Herve, but it is my hardest class this semester despite going through it for stat420!!!

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
12/10/2024

Super nice guy and a really great teacher. His version of this class is fairly demanding; a (usually challenging) reading quiz due before every lecture, in class clicker questions, 4 pretty difficult projects, and some of the most difficult exams i've ever taken. I found the textbook for this class to be a slog to get through, especially towards the end of the semester when the material gets very complicated. Nonetheless, the professor is an extemely knowledgeable and effective teacher, so if you're even somewhat interested in the subject you will probably like this class. If you find you have no interest whatsoever . . . you'll hate it.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A+
Anonymous
12/03/2024

I think we need to find a better way to teach students than just buying a textbook and reading off the textbook all the time. It's also a very very boring textbook and I think the author is trying to be the most boring they can be. There's also discrepancies between the slideshows and the textbook. The last two projects took way longer than they should have just because you have to look around to understand all of the surrounding code and the project description does a very poor job of giving context. So really, I spent more time reading and trying to understand code I didn't write than actually implementing the algorithms in class. Finally, I think the reading quizzes could be improved upon, I know they require extra thinking, but if that's the case maybe they should have two attempts each with the attempts showing what you missed. The point is to learn some material before coming to class, instead, it feels like time wasted after reading the boring textbook for 2 hours and getting a 50%.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B+
Anonymous
11/11/2024

He's really knowledgeable about databases and his topics, but he is the type of professor to enjoy creating hard exams and projects. When reviewing his exam where the average score was very low (he also said several times in class that the exam was "not trivial" with a smug smile every time), he seemed proud of the toughest questions that he concocted. I think this course has traditionally been on the easier side, but I'm not sure what happened here.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A+
juiceman
08/26/2023

1. Did you find the exams and major assignments fair? · The reading quizzes are connected to the readings, but some questions can be tricky and require close attention. · Clicker questions are free as long as someone provides a reasonable justification during class. · The midterm exam was fair. The final exam was challenging but had a significant curve (20%). · The projects were manageable, taking about 10 hours each. The last two projects are based on Berkeley's database class and require understanding the existing codebase before applying class concepts. · The breakdown was projects (32%), midterm (20%), final (32%), clickers (8%), and reading quizzes (8%). — 2. Did you feel the professor had reasonable expectations for the students in the course overall? · Yes. There were reading quizzes almost every week. Clicker questions were challenging but thought-provoking. Exams were reasonable. Participating during class and answering non-trivial questions was expected. Fair application of what we cover in the textbook and class. — 3. Did you like the professor's teaching style? · I enjoyed the professor's teaching style as he provided clear guidance on how to prepare for and succeed in the course. · He offered ample practice problems, gave advice on studying for exams, and emphasized hands-on practice. The midterm heavily focused on the projects. · What I particularly enjoyed was the professor's dedication to creating a positive classroom culture. He made an effort to personalize interactions by remembering and using our names. He encouraged questions and fostered discussions. It was evident that he cared deeply about the subject matter and his students. His enthusiasm was reflected in his attire as well, as he wore a suit to every class. Very caring. — 4. Was the workload appropriate for the number of credits? · The workload was appropriate but slightly heavy, considering 17 reading quizzes (approximately 1.5 hours each), 4 projects (each taking 10 hours), and 2 exams (requiring 10 hours of study each). — 5. Was this course valuable or a waste of time? · This course is highly valuable, especially for those interested in software engineering and data science/machine learning. Interacting with databases is a crucial skill in various careers. He emphasized making 424 practical rather than overly theoretical. · The first half of course covers advanced SQL, ER diagrams, schemas, normalization, and database building components. The second half focuses on theoretical aspects, considering memory constraints and algorithm costs. Cost considerations of queries was one of my favorite topics. B-trees are a significant topic as well. · Projects 3 and 4 provide excellent practice working with large existing codebases. · The TA's (Pooja, Cuong) contribute to the positive learning experience. — 6. How much support did you receive throughout the semester (office hours, extra resources, etc.)? · Four hours of TA office hours were available each week, and the TAs were responsive to Piazza and willing to provide assistance with code privately. · The professor had office hours by appointment (after class) and was always willing to explain clicker and reading quiz questions. · He offered a bonus project to raise project grades and had a generous project late penalty. · Three reading quizzes and three clickers were dropped. · While the professor sometimes spoke quickly and didn't record classes, the classroom culture, energy, and support were excellent. Attendance was required. — 7. TLDR Weekly reading quizzes, clicker questions, mandatory attendance, relevant concepts, fair projects and exams, exceptionally caring and intelligent professor who encourages participation during class. Decent workload, but this is my favorite CS class at UMD. I highly recommend it with Abadi.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B-
Anonymous
05/29/2023

Incredibly knowledgeable about databases. Great lecturer, projects and weekly quizzes are difficult but you get all the help needed. Definitely recommend!

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting a B
Anonymous
05/20/2023

Enjoyed this class with Dr Abadi. You will learn a fair amount about SQL and using DBMS properly, but even more about the in depth technical details of designing databases. The first half of the class is straightforward and fun, learning about writing SQL queries and E/R models. Midterm was pretty easy if you paid attention. The material gets very very difficult towards the end of the semester. Reading quizzes get hard as the semester goes on. The projects become very time consuming and somewhat confusing as well. As always, if you start early, they are doable. Final was egregiously hard, but Dr Abadi informed us that there was a mistake made regarding the difficulty level. A quite substantial curve was provided on the final exam. Overall, would recommend, but be ready for a moderately heavy workload at times.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Anonymous
07/08/2019

Pros: Nice guy Lenient grader Listens to student's concerns Easy and fun material in the beginning Cons: Extremely boring lecturer The class material is extremely boring for the most part Towards the end of the semester the material becomes very difficult

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A
Anonymous
05/14/2018

Good Professor, kinda boring to listen to during lectures but the material is interesting. Willing to listen to students about concerns with the class and will actually do something to address these issues. Exams are pretty hard though, but he curves them enough.

Daniel Abadi
CMSC424

Expecting an A-
Anonymous
05/02/2018

Really nice and lenient grader. Exams aren't too hard