Read Chapter 2 of Database Nation (Simson Garfinkel) and write a one-page
summary of or reaction to what you read.
Listen to (or read through) the online training
Get to know Access 2007.
This is a Microsoft site and may require the use of Microsoft's browser Internet Explorer.
The training consists of three sections, each one has a Test Yourself page with a brief
quiz. Create a Word document that has a screen capture of the three quizzes after you
have taken them. (To make a screen capture you hit the Print Screen key of your keyboard
and then you can paste the screen capture from the clipboard into your Word document.
If you press the Alt key along with the Print Screen key you will only capture the highlighted
item on your desktop -- which is probably preferred in this case.)
Due: Feb. 1
Monday:
We discussed how to start thinking about designing a database from an
entity-relationship perspective. We considered the example of a travel
agency business. We identified the following entities and listing their
associated attributes/properties/fields. (I'm doing this from memory so
my apologies if I forgot the attribute that you contributed to the
discussion)
Trip: TripID, TripCountry, TripCity or TripLocation (this might be
multi-valued and would need further consideration), TripDate,
TripAccomodation (like a hotel, again this might be multi-valued), TripType,
TripDescription, TripPhotos (multivalued), TripVideo (multivalued)
(The last two are to use in our brochures and/or website.)
(We mentioned that because the Customer and Employee entities share a lot
of fields one could have a common table for People and then separate out
the particular fields for a Customer or Employee.)
(We brought up the issue that one person may book a trip for several people,
and this raises the question: is everyone who travels a Customer or only
those who book? And if everyone who travels is a customer, we might want some
field that would keep us from sending multiple copies of the same advertisement
to the same household.)
The relationships between these entities can be seen in part in this
transaction: that a Customer books a Trip, and presumably later a
Customer takes that same Trip (again this question of whether
Customer are those who travel or only those who book), that an Employee
sells a Trip to that Customer, etc.
