Fundamentals of Database Systems

William Makarevich

CS251-1404B-03: Fundamentals of Database Systems  

Phase 1, Individual Project

December 15, 2014

Repurposed: "This task contains portions of material that were originally submitted during the Fall 2014 session in CS251-1404A-03 with Professor Cesar Sanchez."

Contents

1.        Project Outline        

2.        Description of the database design life cycle (Week 1 IP)        

2.1        A description of the selected database project        

2.2 The Seven Steps of Database Design Life Cycle        

2.2        Functions        

2.4 A discussion about the 3 steps in database design        

3. The entity relationship diagram (Week 2 IP)        

3.1 An entity relationship diagram        

4. The logical model and normalization (Week 3 IP)        

4.1 Logical data model        

5. The Microsoft Access database (Week 4)        

5.1 Your database created in Microsoft Access        

6. The Microsoft Access database application (Week 5 IP)        

6.1 Complete your Microsoft Access application        

6.2 Menu, forms, and reports        

References        

1. Project Outline

• Determine an event driven canonical data modeling system to use.
• Determine the events that are associated with the system.
• Define messages associated with each event.
• Design a data warehouse, which will be updated after each event is analyzed.

1. Description of the database design life cycle (Week 1 IP)

1. A description of the selected database project

A database is a collection or a set of logically related data that one can update, retrieve, or amend to meet the end-user needs.  In view of this, examples of databases include airline booking reservation system, electronic telephone book, police systems, warehouse stock system and hotel booking system. The common type of database is the relational database that shows the relationship between entities.  The system accuracy, efficiency, and effectiveness are highly dependent on the system design. Notably, in this research paper, the design of a hotel booking system is considered.  The system will be used for room bookings in a hotel. The system accepts two kinds of bookings; advanced bookings and current bookings. The system includes a checkout system that takes care of rooms that were booked but are not occupied. Additionally, the system entails a database that maintains booking details and room availability records. Additionally, the database contains information about the features of each room.  In a relational database, the system design life cycle (SDLC) consists of seven steps (Computerworld, 2014).

2.2 The Seven Steps of Database Design Life Cycle

The development of this system will be done according to the waterfall software development technique. In this technique, each phase is carefully executed after the completion of another phase. The various phases of the design life cycle are as follows:

1. Primary Investigations

This is the initial step in designing one’s database application or software. All stakeholders of the hotel, including the management, were involved in this stage. It is worth mentioning that one considers a database to be effective if it is user-friendly; thus, individual contribution is vital. Furthermore, the identification of an organizational problem justifies the need for a database, as it is the case for training after the needs-based assessment. The managers, receptionists, waiters, cashiers, and other workers in the hotel distribute out individual responsibilities and roles. Besides, a selected committee was selected to develop a budget for the system design as well as a contingent table. It is important to note that in this phase, the administration team and the team of database designers consider all the likely risks in the system development (Kelly &Latamore, 1993).

1. Planning and Requirements

After the firm appropriately commits its resources, the second phase will commence. This stage involves defining, collecting and validating support, training, and functional requirements. Precisely, the design of the database system should serve a purpose; hence, the involved parties define the database mission statement and mission objectives. In identifying the purpose of the database, one indicates what he or she wants the database to do, the information it ought to contain and the expected outcome. The hotel booking system’s database mission statement is to maintain the data that the hotel can use to control and update visitors’ records while facilitating information sharing with its branches. In relation with this, the mission objectives are to maintain data on branches and visitors and to perform searches on the unoccupied and occupied rooms.

1.      Design

Here, the developers translate the above named requirements into detailed and preliminary designs. The system emphasizes on the functional features; thus, the designers analyze the system requirements to determine the appropriate model to eliminate redundancy. The design shows two primary categories namely the logical and physical designs. In regard with the database, one may develop unique tables that help answer specified questions. Examples of such tables include the calls table that enumeration information of particular calls and the contact table that categorizes visitor’s address and cell phone number.