ASSIGNMENT ONE 15 marks
Due Friday 23/9/2011 at 5pm
Released on 3/08/2011, last updated 3/08
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This assignment is a group assignment.
This assignment needs to be completed in group of 2 student
members. If such a group is formed, both members must come from the
same campus, and also within the tutorial classes of the same
tutor whenever possible. While lecturers and tutors will help as
much as they can, it is essentially each student's own motivation and
responsibility to form a group for this assignment. Students not
willing or not able to form a group in a timely manner will have to do
the complete assignment on his or her own.
It is anticipated that most students will finish forming their
assignment group within 2 weeks, that is, within semester week 3 and week 4.
Database Modelling
In this assignment, you are asked to design a database to support the
management of a beauty parlour. The major business requirements are
summarised below in the Mini Case: Beauty Salon. You are asked
to develop a detailed Entity-Relationship model for this mini
case. Your ER model should consist of a detailed ER diagram integrated
with itemised discussions on the features of the entities and
relationships and all the assumptions you made. The ER diagram and the
accompanying document should identify keys, constraints, entity types,
relationship types, specialisation/generalisation, etc. The ER diagram
should in general have more than 5 entity or relationship types and no
more than 15. This means that students will have to selectively
identify those most important entity types and relationship types for
their work and for the fulfillment of the key business
functionalities. More concretely, your deliverables should include
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Executive Summary on the enterprise need in succinct terms, and
on what has actually been done in your assignment and to what
extent. It must be concise and right to the point. (1 mark)
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A list of supplementary business rules or assumptions that underpin
your particular database design. When pertinent, link them to the part
of your database design with short comments. (2 marks)
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A detailed ER diagram for the model, highlighting primary keys,
multiplicity constraints, generalisation/specialisation, important
attributes, and other pertinent details. (7 marks)
- You must use the same notation scheme for the ER diagram as the
textbook, and the ER diagram should be strictly in the sense the
textbook uses. We note that past experiences show drawing your ER
diagram on Microsoft Powerpoint gives one better control and
flexibility when compared with drawing diagrams on Microsoft Word.
- The ER diagram should include, among others, representative
attributes for all entity types, proper subclassing, and correct
participation multiplicities for the relationship types. It should be
meaningfully and well designed, and should also include all relevant
and necessary aspects (5 marks)
- Among all the relationships in your design, find a relatively
nontrivial one in terms of its multiplicity constraints and explain
explicitly the meaning or implication of those multiplicity
constraints. (0.5 mark)
- Among all the weak entity types, explain for one of them why it is
a weak entity type. (0.5 mark)
- Among all the generalisation/specialisation cases in the ER
diagram, find a relatively nontrivial one in terms of the subclassing
complexity, and explain the meaning of the actual subclassing in this
case and the mearning of the associated participation and disjoint
constraints. (1 mark)
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A list of all the entity types and relationship types in the form of
schemas. (2 marks)
DATABASE SCHEMAS EXAMPLES:
1. Staff(staffId, firstName, lastName, phone, mobile, email);
2. Provides(therapistId, serviceId);
...
- A list of functional dependencies, with comments when pertinent.
(2 marks)
- A list of 5 most important (and mutually dissimilar as much as
possible) queries in English (not SQL) a beauty parlour as a business
will typically make through this database system, and an indication on
which of these queries are feasible (i.e. achievable) under your
current design. (1 mark)
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A statement on the work distribution in percentage (e.g. 50% for David
and 50% for Louise) agreed among all the group members. If this
statement is absent, then it will be assumed that all group members
have made equal amount of contribution to the assignment solution.
Achieving a 50%/50% work distribution is also the goal of this team
work; the person who contributes less than 50% may result in having
less mark than the other team member.
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A hardcopy of your electronic submission is also due at the same time
as the electronic submission, and needs to be delivered on your own
campus. More precise locations will be announced at vUWS in the due
course. However, a student may choose to deliver the hardcopy on the
Monday immediately following the deadline date regardless whether this
is a mid-semester break. The hardcopy must be the same as the
submitted softcopy. The electronic submission is the official
submission, submitting a hardcopy without submitting the electronic
copy within the due date will be deemed NOT having submitted the
assignment.
NOTE: If a hardcopy is not received by the above specified
date for a student, then the student will eventually receive only the
mark for the assignment derived from a marking sheet, and will not be
able to get the more detailed feedback that could be otherwise written
to your submitted hardcopy.
Mini Case: Beauty Salon
Beauty Salon is a system to be designed to manage the
booking and the payment of a single beauty parlour.
Beauty Therapists: A beauty parlour has a number of staff
members most of which are beauty therapists. Some beauty therapists
are well-established professionals while others may just be the
trainees. Different thereapists may also have different availability
for work. For instance, some may not work on Saturdays while
others might be on leave for a few weeks.
Beauty Care and Treatments: There are a number of beauty
treatments or services a therapist can undertake, including manicure,
pedicure, waxing, threading, facials and massages, to name a few.
Different therapists may be able to provide different ranges of
specific services, depending on the actual individuals. Some
(item-based) services such as waxing will be charged per item while
others (time-based) such as massage will be charged per half an hour
or per hour. The fees for item-based services are fixed across all the
therapists. But the fees for time-based services may vary among the
therapists due to their different level of expertise.
Treatment Venues: When a booking is being made, it is possible
to agree on a specific venue to conduct the services. Such venues
could be other similar parlours or shops at which a particular beauty
therapist also works.
Clients: Each regular client or patron will typically have her
own client record set up on the system, and this will allow her to
easily make a booking or make a payment. However, a non-regular
customer will also be able to turn up in the beauty parlour and
request a service to be done to her. Such customers don't have to
create their client profiles and can still receive the services when
they just turn up in the parlour, provided there are suitable
therapists available at the parlour at the time.
Payments: The payment for the services of each booking or
appointment will also be recorded. The payment can be made in cash, or
via a credit card. The payment details will be recorded accordingly.
Business Activities: For the typical business activities, the
Beauty Salon system will allow one to view which appointments
have been made on any given day for any particular therapist, list all
the available therapists for a given period of time, browse all the
payments for a given day, and many more.
Note on Submission
- This assignment must be submitted electronically via
vUWS before the due date. No email submissions will be
accepted.
- It is the students' responsibility to retrieve and keep all their
submission receipts. If in doubt, consult your tutors well before the
submission due date.
- Submitted files may be zipped together as a single zip
file (but not as a zipx file), if a student wishes to do
so. However, no other file compression or file archiving formats will
be accepted for the submission.
- Each group must submit exactly one copy of their assignment
solution electronically by one of the team members. If the other
group member really wants to submit it as well due to whatever
reasons, then the name of the submitted files must start with
"please_ignore_" (such files will not be treated as regular
submissions and will be ignored during the marking). Otherwise 1
mark may be deducted for the duplicated electronic submission.
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Each submission must be accompanied by a declaration of the ownership
of the submitted work as described in the unit outline and learning
guide. No signature is however required for the electronic
submissions. Please note that an examiner or lecturer/tutor has the
right not to mark this assignment if a pertinent declaration is not
present in your submission.
- Late
submissions will attract a daily incremented late penalty of 10%
per day.
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Electronic submission on the due date after 5pm before 12
midnight will still be accepted without penalty. However, any
submission failure in that period due to either the student faults or
the fault or malfunction of the School's or UWS' servers will not be
accepted as the legitimate reasons for a late submission. Beware that
School's servers often need to be shut down for maintenance from late
Fridays or just before public holidays.