Entity-RelationshipModel and Database Design
CourseNo:
Module
Case Module 2 – Case
Thisreport documents the design of database tables for a localelectronics store following specific requirements. In addition, anEntity Relationship Diagram is also provided showing how these tablesrelate with one another.
TableDesign
EmployeeTable
CustomerTable
SalesOrder Table
ERDiagram
LessonsLearnt
Inthe process of designing the three tables shown in the previous page,I learnt several important things regarding designing databases.First, I realized, from a practical perspective, that designingtables requires structuring and organizing data in a manner that dataneeds to be easily found and related to one another within a largedatabase system. The whole aspect of doing this led me into learningmore about the concept of maintaining database integrity throughdatabase normalization (Connolly & Begg, 2005). I understand thisconcept more than I did before doing this assignment as it helpsreduce data redundancy and make query execution faster.
Second,creating the ER diagram was challenging. I tried using tools like MSAccess to create this but the diagram was not looking professionaland lacked a proper display of the relationships between differententities. I resorted to using a trial version of Design 8, a tool formodeling databases. I had to create the table structures in MS Access10 then imported them to Dezign 8 and format it to yield the ERdiagram shown in the previous page. My attempts to design the ERdiagram on MS Word were not successful as I am not good at this.Finally, I realized that I could easily include more fields to thethree tables as there was no limit as to what constitutes each table.For this reason, I included whatever fields I found more useful torepresent the case study. In conclusion, this was a very interestingassignment with challenges that I enjoyed solving and learning whilesolving them.
Reference
Connolly,T. & Begg, C. (2005). DatabaseSystems: A Practical Approach to Design, Implementation, andManagement (4th Ed.).Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.