Assessment

Overview

An overview of the asessment is given in the table below.

Item	Focus	Value	Due Date
Assignment 1	SQL statements	15%	Friday, Week 6  (August 29) extended  from original date, Ausgust 22
Assignment 2	Database Design
		15%	draft, Thursday, week  8  (September 18) final, Friday, week 9  (September 26)
Assignment 3	Specifications (not examinable)	15%	Friday, week 12 (October 17)
Exam	All topics (except assignment 3)	55%	Exam

 

 

Assignment 1

For this assignment you will write some SQL queries to retrieve information from a database.

A library database is used for this assignment. View the details of the library database and  Download the assignment.

 

 

 

 

 

Assignment 2

In this assignment you will identify a situation and design a database for it. This assignment is to be done in pairs.

This assignment has two parts

• Part A: draw the ER diagram
• Part B: map the ER diagram to 3NF

Part A: ER diagram

Identify the situation that you wish to design a database for. The situation needs to exist (not an imaginary company for example) and ideally be something you are interested in. Topics in the past have included hobbies (cricket teams, online games), associations (hockey clubs, childcare centre), work-related concerns (fishing boats, student enrolments, art gallery) or other interests (Harry Potter).

Try to pick an application that is relatively substantial, but not too enormous. For example, when expressed in the ER diagram, you might want your design to have in the range of five or so entities, and a similar number of relationships. The total number of entities plus relationships should be in the 8-14 range. Be aware, however, that entities or relationships that should be represented by attributes instead (a matter we'll discuss in class) do not "count."

You should certainly include different kinds of relationships (many-one, many-many) and different kinds of data (strings, integers, etc.), but your application is not required to use advanced features, such as associated entities, if they are not appropriate for your application.

Part a will be handed in twice, draft and final.

• Draft: these will be not be marked. Instead you will swap your scenario with another group
• Final: this version will be marked

Hand ins:

For both the draft and final stages

• Describe the situation. Your description should be brief and relatively informal (maximum length 1 A4 page). If there are any unique or particularly difficult aspects of your proposed application, please point them out. Your description will be marked only on suitability and conciseness
• Specify an ER diagram for your proposed database. You need to show attributes, primary keys, relationships and cardinality

Part B: Map the ER diagram to 3NF

Translate your ER Diagram into a schema of normalised tables. These must be in at least 3rd Normal Form.

Hand ins:

• your ER diagram
• your database schema

Assignment 3

This assignment continues buliding on your scenario from assignment 2. This assignment is to be done in your pairs.

Download the assignment and  view a a sample specification.