Description

About this Assignment

Database management systems are key element of information technology systems that are used on a day-to-day basis by many organizations. The keys to using a database management system are to collect the necessary requirements for the database, translate these requirements into a database design, create the database from the design, load data into the database, and finally to perform manipulations of the database. The purpose of this final assignment is to ensure that you understand and can carry out the necessary tasks in order to manage a sample database.

From a high-level standpoint, this final project consists of the following steps:

1. Selection of a database.
2. Identifying the requirements for the database based on the purpose for the database and the data to fill the database.
3. Create a database design based on the requirements for the database, create the physical database, and load data into the database.
4. After loading the database, carry out sample queries that would be performed on the actual database. Show the results of the sample queries.

This project will consist of a series of steps defined in the prompts of the assignment. Some of the prompts are necessary to properly prepare for the manipulation of the database whereas others will be necessary for you to complete to demonstrate your competence with the concepts of this topic. The answers to these prompts will be examined against the actual expected answers to the prompt. All prompts that will be assessed against an answer key, meaning that you will get either full, partial, or no points per prompt.

Setting up the Database/Preparing for this Project

In order to carry out this project it will be necessary for you to set up your access to a database system. The following instructions will explain how to do this.

First, be sure you have MySQL installed and have started the Workbench. Installation instructions for installing a free version of MySQL are located in the lesson Installing MySQL for Database Programming.

Additional Project Preparations

Each prompt will ask you to enter an SQL statement, or to formulate an SQL statement. After entering the SQL statement, a window containing the results of the statement (called a query) will be displayed. This results displayed on this screen will be the answer to the prompt and what will be graded. You are to turn in a word document that contains a series of screen captures that contain the results of an SQL statement. The word document will contain multiple pages, each page containing one or more screen captures associated with the prompt. The screens associated with a prompt should be labeled with some text that indicate the prompt they are associated with.

There are different ways to obtain a screen capture. On a PC you can press the CTRL key and the Print Screen key. Then you can past the captured screen into the document. Pressing Shift-Command-3 on a Mac will capture the current screen on the Mac and place a file of this capture on the desktop.