The spotlight is on Khalid Saleem, Assistant Professor, Computer Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan

Quaid-i-Azam University is a public research-oriented university located in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Its four faculties and nine research institutes offer undergraduate and graduate studies including Master’s in Philosophy and doctoral programs. The Department of Computer Sciences prepares students for PhD, MPhil, MS (Information Science & Technology), BS, and MSc degrees.

Dr. Khalid Saleem teaches Database Design to undergraduates and Intelligent Information Systems to post-graduates, focusing on computer programming, data warehousing, data mining and machine learning. He completed a Master’s degree in Computer Science at Quaid-i-Azam University and holds a Masters in Philosophy (MPhil) and a PhD from Montpellier University, France.

Quaid-i-Azam University became an Oracle Academy institutional member in 2018, when Saleem proposed using Database Foundations and Database Design and Programming with SQL resources in his Database Design classes.

Since then he has introduced undergraduate, postgraduate and research students to Oracle Application Express (APEX) and the Oracle Academy Cloud Program.

Oracle Academy: How did you come to implement Oracle Academy curriculum and resources in the university?

Khalid Saleem: After many years as an Oracle programmer at the Government of Pakistan revenue division, I turned to teaching. I have practiced and taught Oracle database since the 1990s. Five years ago, I recommended using Oracle Academy resources for the Computer Science department’s five database-related courses. I always find something in the curriculum to incorporate into my teaching. Our research students also use the tools provided by Oracle Academy.

Oracle Academy: Which courses do you use?

Khalid Saleem: In Database Design I acquaint undergraduates with relational databases and SQL using Oracle’s MySQL database for the design of physical databases. The most important thing for me is the proper running of SQL statements, which I teach them using materials from the Oracle Academy Database Design and Programming with SQL curriculum. Once students have their own databases, I assign Oracle Cloud Free Tier accounts for them to see how things are managed at the cloud level. Then they deploy Oracle’s Database-as-a-Service to replicate their databases in the cloud.

Oracle Academy: And for postgraduates?

Khalid Saleem: I deliver an evening class to post-graduates working full time, usually in financial services, telco or government. Intelligent Information Systems is a mélange of many data science topics that supports our Masters in Information Sciences and Technology degree. This semester we are using Oracle Academy Cloud Program accounts for basic SQL training and machine learning instruction. I teach them data warehouse and its implementation and then move onto the data mining part and the importance of in-database algorithms related to machine learning. For this subject I use Oracle Machine Learning for SQL to show how to generate prediction models. Oracle Cloud is invaluable in this respect.

Oracle Academy: Are you also using these resources in academic research projects?

Khalid Saleem: Indeed. Our MPhil and PhD programs are geared towards research that will benefit government and industry. As do the other faculties of Quaid-i-Azam, we in Computer Science have a continuous flow of research projects.

Recently, we won an industry-related research project, for developing an optimal route planning system for Pakistan’s largest courier/logistics company, using the Oracle database. Six of our research students, belonging to PhD, MPhil and BS programs, are working with the machine learning libraries within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to develop algorithms for predicting ideal routes for the client’s 350,000 daily deliveries.

Oracle Academy: Do researchers use Oracle Application Express in any of these projects?

Khalid Saleem: They do, and I can give you a couple of examples. The first is in support for Pakistan’s smart metering grid initiative. We have initiated research for the government’s water and power authority, to develop an application for handling data coming from smart meters in real time. We are using Oracle APEX to drive a solution based on Oracle Utilities Advanced Metering, widely used around the world for smart metering.

Another project in which computer science plays a role is a data integration research project we call Multi-Sensor Data Fusion. Again, using Oracle Data Warehouse and Oracle APEX for web-app development, the task is to come up with a framework to help the oil industry integrate metadata from thousands of sensors installed in various assets ― from refineries to pipelines to oil and gas terminals. The goal is to accumulate all the data efficiently for decision makers to mine.

Oracle Academy: It sounds like you are truly preparing students for the real world! What are the job opportunitites in Pakistan?

Khalid Saleem: The students working on these projects are all graduates in Database Design and have ample job opportunities in Islamabad where so many government and private agencies use the Oracle database. There’s a shortage of Oracle-skilled people in Pakistan, particularly in support functions but also in database skills. Sometimes my students are more attracted to what they believe are more exciting web development type jobs. I explain the stark difference in salaries between backend database skills, including data analytics, and web interface design. Everyone wants to make more money, but they have to understand the jobs with the most value.

Oracle Academy: Is there anything else on your horizon?

Khalid Saleem: I’m interested in incorporating Oracle Academy’s materials for information visualization. Everything connected to data analytics is of interest to me. In addition, I am recommending my students attend as many online Oracle conferences as possible to complement the resources available on the Oracle Academy Member Hub.

Oracle Academy: What about certifications?

Khalid Saleem: My students are more motivated getting an academic program certification or diploma with high grades! All Quaid-i-Azam University courses are related to academic programs and they are most prized in our society. However, when it comes to Oracle Certified Associate certifications, we have not pushed these until now. But this year in the Intelligent Information Systems course I will be urging them to go for Oracle Cloud certifications such as Oracle Autonomous Database Cloud Certified Specialist.

And, on the subject of visualization, we are outlining a new project involving geographical data. The objective is to mitigate the phenomena named Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOF), a climate‐change‐induced hazard in northern Pakistan caused by melting glaciers. We are collaborating with the Pakistan Meteorological Department to map these lakes formed when methane bursts the glaciers. In this example, it is the Oracle Spatial and Graph feature of Oracle 21c database, available in the cloud, that we are considering using, along with Oracle APEX.

I am grateful to Oracle Academy for providing such powerful teaching and research tools.

Thank you, Dr. Khalid Saleem, for your passion for Oracle Academy and for preparing your students to make a positive impact.