A Veterinary Clinic Manages The Medical Care Needed For Pets

A Veterinary Clinic Manages The Medicalcare Needed For Pets A Pet Own

A veterinary clinic manages the medical care needed for pets. A pet owner may have several pets (dogs, cats, rabbits, etc.), with the following restrictions:

1. Each pet belongs to a particular owner.

2. Each pet is fussy and eats only particular types of pet food.

3. More than one pet may eat each type of pet food.

4. Each pet may take several medications. The dosage will vary for each pet.

Use the information provided above, supplemented with your knowledge of veterinary clinics and pets, to create: 1) an ERD and 2) a set of third normal form relations to represent the pet clinic database. Use only the following attributes: OwnerID, PetFoodName, #OfPetsOwned, Owner Name, PetType, FoodCostPerPound, PetID, PetAge, MedID, PetName, Owner Phone#, MedDosage. Do not include foreign keys on the ERD. Underline the primary key of each relation. It may be helpful to create your own sample data. Document any additional assumptions you make.

Paper For Above instruction

The management of a pet veterinary clinic requires an efficient database system to handle various related entities such as pet owners, pets, pet foods, and medications. An Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) and relations in third normal form (3NF) are essential for organizing this data to ensure data integrity and facilitate ease of retrieval. This paper details the creation of an ERD and a set of 3NF relations based on the provided specifications and assumptions to illustrate a comprehensive pet clinic database system.

Entity-Relationship Diagram (ERD) Design

The ERD captures the fundamental entities: Owner, Pet, PetFood, and Medication. The primary keys for these entities are OwnerID, PetID, PetFoodName, and MedID respectively. The relationships are as follows:

  • Owner-Pet Relationship: One owner can own many pets, but a pet belongs to a single owner. This is a one-to-many (1:N) relationship.
  • Pet-PetFood Relationship: A pet is picky and eats only certain types of pet food. Each pet can eat many types of food, and each food can be eaten by many pets, indicating a many-to-many (M:N) relationship. This is typically resolved through a junction table.
  • Pet-Medication Relationship: A pet may take multiple medications, and each medication can be given to multiple pets. Moreover, the dosage varies per pet, so this requires an associative entity.

Notably, the ERD does not include foreign keys but captures the core relationships and entities. Sample data would support the understanding of relationships, with assumptions made to fill in data gaps, especially regarding medication dosages and food costs.

Normalization into Third Normal Form (3NF)

To transition into 3NF, relations are designed to eliminate redundancy and dependency anomalies:

  1. Owners: Owner(OwnerID, OwnerName, OwnerPhone#)
    • OwnerID as primary key.
  2. Pets: Pet(PetID, PetName, PetType, PetAge, OwnerID)
    • PetID as primary key.
    • OwnerID as foreign key referencing Owners.
  3. PetFood: PetFood(PetFoodName, FoodCostPerPound, #OfPetsOwned)
    • PetFoodName as primary key.
  4. PetFoodEatings: PetFoodEatings(PetID, PetFoodName)
    • Composite primary key: (PetID, PetFoodName).
    • PetID foreign key referencing Pets.
    • PetFoodName foreign key referencing PetFood.
  5. Medications: Medication(MedID, MedName)
    • MedID as primary key.
  6. PetMedications: PetMedication(PetID, MedID, MedDosage)
    • Composite primary key: (PetID, MedID).
    • PetID foreign key referencing Pets.
    • MedID foreign key referencing Medications.

This schema ensures data normalization while capturing multiple relationships, including the many-to-many associations between pets and foods and pets and medications, with dosage variations stored in the associative entity.

Additional Assumptions

  • Sample Data: Assumed for illustration; e.g., OwnerID starting from 1, PetID unique integers, etc.
  • Medication Name & Cost: Simplified by creating a Medications table with MedID and MedName; costs can be included if necessary separately.
  • Food Cost & #OfPetsOwned: Assumed to be attributes of PetFood, representing average or current data. The number of pets owned by an owner is tracked via Owner’s total count, but stored separately due to normalization.

Conclusion

Creating an ERD complemented by normalized relations facilitates the management of complex relationships in a veterinary pet clinic. The outlined approach ensures data integrity, eliminates redundancies, and supports scalable future modifications, underpinning effective operational and analytical capabilities.

References

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