[tech] systems and databases -- oh my!

my 2nd course was the berkeley take on graduate intro to systems -- a combination of databases and operating systems. there are two professors, call them DB and OS, who heckle each other when one is speaking. the course looks to be very interesting: we talk about the detailed decisions that go into making systems, and what are the tradeoffs of each decision. we read lots of papers. we get to yell at the profs too. i'm a bit worried because i don't remember any systems stuff and have never taken a databases course and there's an "entrace" exam on thursday, but i think i can brush up.