CSC 240: The Week beginning Aug. 30
- Reading:
Chapter 1 in Database Systems: Design, Implementation, & Management
(Rob and Coronel)
- Homework:
- Read Chapter 1 of Database Nation (Simson Garfinkel) and write a
summary of or reaction to what you read.
- Surf the web for sites on the Olympics or news channels reporting on the
Olympics. Consider organizing the information into a database. Identify at least
three entities. Identify at least twelve attributes/fields spread across your
entities. Identify at least three relationships between your entities. Write down
at least four questions that you might anticipate someone using this database to
answer.
Due Sept. 8
Monday:
Course Syllabus
Introduction to databases
Wednesday:
We brainstormed about the data involved in purchasing items online (e.g. item name, description, price, size, shipping cost, etc.). We then discussed that
to store the data, each piece of data should have a type (e.g. integer,
decimal, real, text/string, memo, etc.). We started organizing the data into
entities such as Item and Transaction. We considered relationships between
entities for instance item(s) were ordered in a transaction. We started
discussing kinds of relationships: since a transaction could contain many
items and a given item may be part of many transactions -- this particular
relationship is referred to as "many-to-many." We started to consider
implementing the database by considering what the tables should look like.
Some of the data belonged to an Item table, some belonged to a Transaction
table, and other data belonged to an ItemInTransaction table that was necessary
to realize the "many-to-many" relationship. We also saw the need to introduction
ID fields to serve as "keys."
Friday:
Introduction to Access