Lab 1: Creating A Database Design Worth 75 Points
Lab 1Lab 1: Creating a Database Design Worth 75 points This assignment contains two (2) Sections: Database Design and Design Summary.
Develop a database for a local college to keep track of students, courses, and instructors based on provided business rules and data models. Create a database diagram with entities and attributes representing the scenario, and then write a one-page paper discussing how well your diagram reflects the database design. The diagram can be created using Microsoft Visio, other applications, or even pen and paper, with a photograph submitted for assessment. Your paper should be formatted as a double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12-point document with appropriate APA or school-specific citations and a cover page.
In your diagram, depict entities such as Student, Course, and Instructor, including relevant attributes (e.g., student ID, course name, instructor ID) and identify relationships among these entities, such as which instructor teaches which course and which students enroll in which courses. The diagram must accurately reflect the scenario and demonstrate proper normalization and entity-relationship design principles.
Paper For Above instruction
The development of a well-structured database is fundamental to effectively managing organizational data, particularly within an educational context such as a college. In constructing the database for the college scenario, the primary entities identified are Students, Courses, and Instructors. These entities form the core of the database design, which aims to support various queries and administrative operations, including tracking student enrollments, instructor assignments, and course offerings.
Design of Entities and Attributes
The Student entity includes attributes such as Student ID, Name, Major, and Enrollment Year. Student ID serves as the primary key, uniquely identifying each student. The Course entity comprises Course ID, Course Name, Credits, and Department. Similarly, Course ID is the primary key, with other attributes providing descriptive and organizational information about each course. The Instructor entity contains Instructor ID, Name, Department, and Contact Information, with Instructor ID functioning as the primary key.
Relationships and Normalization
To represent the relationship between students and courses, a junction or associative entity, commonly called Enrollment, is introduced. The Enrollment entity captures the many-to-many relationship where students can enroll in multiple courses, and each course can have numerous students. Attributes of the Enrollment entity include Student ID, Course ID, and Enrollment Date, with a composite primary key consisting of Student ID and Course ID to uniquely identify each enrollment record.
Each course is taught by an instructor, establishing a one-to-many relationship between Instructor and Course. An instructor may teach multiple courses, but each course has a single instructor. The Course entity includes a foreign key, Instructor ID, linking it to the Instructor entity.
This design adheres to normalization principles, reducing redundancy and ensuring data integrity. The entities are normalized to at least the third normal form, with clear distinctions among entities and appropriate use of primary and foreign keys.
Reflection on the Diagram's Effectiveness
The diagram effectively models the database requirements and encapsulates the relationships among students, courses, and instructors. It captures the many-to-many relationship between students and courses through the Enrollment entity, facilitating complex queries such as listing all students enrolled in a particular course or identifying all courses a student is taking. Additionally, linking courses to instructors via a foreign key streamlines instructor assignment tracking.
Such a design supports scalability and future modifications, such as adding additional entities like Departments or Classrooms, without significant restructuring. Overall, the diagram provides a comprehensive and accurate representation of the college's data management needs, ensuring data integrity and facilitating efficient data retrieval.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the database diagram developed for the college scenario effectively captures the essential entities, attributes, and relationships required to manage the institution’s data. It aligns with best practices in database normalization and entity-relationship modeling, providing a robust foundation for a functional and scalable database system.
References
Communications of the ACM, 13(6), 377-387. Addison-Wesley Professional. Fundamentals of database systems (7th ed.). Pearson. Relational database design (2nd ed.). Morgan Kaufmann. Academic Press. Addison-Wesley. Database systems: Design, implementation, & management (13th ed.). Cengage Learning. Computer Science Press. Database systems: Concepts, languages, and architectures. Pearson. Springer.