LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY

Design Problem 2

Code :CSE 351 Course

Title:DATABASE SYSTEMS

School:LHST Department:CSE/IT

Name of the faculty member: Jaspreet Kaur Sahiwal

Class: Term: Section:

Batch:

Max. Marks: DOA: DOS:

Purpose

Databases are created within the context of an organization (or individual), generally in response
to a perceived information need. Your job as a database designer is to work with the organization
to determine its particular needs, to examine the details of those needs, and to propose an
appropriate relational database solution. You may approach this problem from the perspective of
an employee in the organization concerned, or that of a consultant whom the organization has
hired to manage this process. Either way, you need to gain a thorough understanding of the
organization’s information goals and desires before proceeding with the design phase. You may
choose to design a database for a real organization (one you work for, volunteer with, etc.) or
you may create a fictitious one. If you choose a fictitious organization, make sure you are
familiar enough with its business context to provide adequate, realistic detail in your Design
Problem Solution.

Elements

1. A description of the organization

Provide background information on your chosen organization, detailing its functions, business
goals, operating context, etc. For example, if you choose a video store chain, you might describe
the size and structure of the organization, the industry in general, the place of the company
among its competitors, and so forth. This section should not be more than 1 pages in length.

2. The business case

Provide information about the specific information needs for which you are proposing a
solution. Explain the current state of affairs, any past work done in this area, and why a change is
needed. Perhaps the organization has never before had a database for this sort of work; perhaps
they have an existing database that no longer functions properly; perhaps the world has changed,
and they need to handle their information differently. Develop a proper mission statement and set
of mission objectives. Describe in detail the information problems you plan to tackle. Discuss
what advantages your database offers the organization, and what the ramifications are if they do
not implement this database. Discuss also the scope of your database, which functional areas it
does and does not address. You may wish to include some high-level discussion of the inputs and
outputs of the processes you are modeling, or maybe include some simple workflow diagrams
(not the same thing as the ER diagram). Any combination of textual and graphical information is
appropriate if it contributes to a better understanding of the information needs and goals you are
trying to meet.

3. The results of your fact-finding work

Describe what fact-finding activities you undertook, and their results. If you conducted
interviews, for instance, transcripts or synopses would be appropriate. If you used surveys,
include a sample of your survey form, and a discussion of the resulting data. The results of your
investigations form the basis of your user definitions, or “views”, as well as the database’s
functional requirements. If you are working with a fictitious organization, you might consider
asking friends, family or colleagues to help you with this part of the assignment. You would be
surprised what sorts of information people come up with during role-playing sessions. Their
questions for you, and their insights, would likely prove of great worth.

4. A description of the database’s functional requirements

From your investigations, explain what needs to happen inside your database. What specific
processes are you modeling, what data are you handling, and what questions do you plan to
answer from the data?. Provide a brief description of each function (input, manipulation, output),
explaining where it fits within the process chain.

5. An initial entity-relationship diagram

Use whatever software package you like (or even a pencil and paper) to produce a clear ER
diagram. Show all entities and their relationships, as well as the primary key for each entity.

6. A complete normalized database schema

Clearly specify the tables with constraints, views and other database objects (index, sequence,
procedure, triggers etc) required to best support your organizational needs. All tables should be
normalized up to BCNF

7. Proposal to maintain security

Briefly describe the security policies which may be applied to protect your data from malicious
users

8. Measures to control Concurrency

 If the same system is to be implemented in multi user client server environment, how will you
ensure consistency for concurrent access?