90-728 Management Information Systems

MIS Homework #3: Relational Database Models

Due 9/14/99 at the start of class

Instructions on preparing exercise 1:

 Include in the relational database model only attributes explicitly discussed or absolutely
needed.
 For this homework set, use all capital letters for table names, capitalize attributes, underline
primary keys, use an '@' to denote foreign keys, and use '...' to indicate as necessary that more
attributes will be included in the finished database.
 Include all primary and foreign keys, plus only those non-key and code attributes explicitly
mentioned in text. Remember that all attributes must have unique names in a database, and
should be self-documenting labels. Use long names like “Promised Payment Date” or “Contact
Mode Code”.
 List primary keys first and then foreign keys in your models, followed by non-key attributes.
 Include first and last names of person entity sets as attributes. Break addresses up into street
number and name (combined), street type, city, zip.
 For code tables, include only single attribute, self-documenting codes. Below each code table,
list all code values (if the list is short and complete) or samples provided in the problem
statement.

Exercise 1. Write the relational database model for the Development Department of The
Performing Arts Company.

Background: The development staff of The Performing Arts Company maintains a list of potential
financial donors. Affiliates (development staff members or a members of the Company's Board of
Trustees) use the donor list to solicit financial gifts through periodic contacts. Contacts may be
through telephone, mail, or personal contact (e.g., at a dinner sponsored by the Company or a visit
to the donor's place of work or residence).

Problem: The Executive Director of the Performing Arts Company has determined that
effectiveness and efficiency of the development department needs to be increased. Development
needs to raise more funds with existing staff and resources.

Approach: The director of development suggests that a development database and application
programs could provide the information necessary for improving development efforts. She
would like to have a database and applications built around the financial donor list to provide
information: a) on which donors are the most promising to contact, b) for generating schedules on
which potential donors to contact and when to do so, and c) for estimating the number of contacts
that must be made before a gift is pledged for different categories of prospective donors. (Note that
the database would not meet these needs directly, but would provide the necessary input data for
analyses.)
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Preliminary Database Design:

 Besides name, mailing address, and phone number, data gathered on each donor include the
donor's preferred contact mode, C-MODE CODE, (telephone, mail, or personal contact) and
next contact date as determined by the development director or contacting affiliate.
 CONTACT has a serial number for its primary key. AFFILIATE and DONOR also have
sequence numbers as primary keys.
 Contact outcome code (OUTCOME CODE) has values: gift made, no gift but good prospect
for future gifts, or poor prospect.
 Contacts that are successes, have the amount of the gift and anticipated date of payment
recorded.

1 C_MODE 1

CODE

M M
1 M M 1
DONOR CONTACT AFFILIATE
M 1

1
1
OUTCOME
SUCCESS
CODE
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Instructions on preparing exercise 2:
 When drawing the entity-relationship diagram, include all connectivity indicators (1 or M) for
relationships. Include all code tables as entity sets.
 Use all capital letters for entities.
 Include text that describes how one entity is related to another, e.g. “STUDENT (enrolls in)
CLASS” and position this text below or to the right of the line that links the two entities
 Do not include entity attributes.
 List all values for code tables below the E-R diagram.

Exercise 2. Create an entity-relationship diagram for the State Environmental Protection Agency.

The State Environmental Protection Agency has partitioned the state into air pollution control
regions. Each region has air pollution sources (e.g., electric power plants, factories, etc.). Each
source has one or more air pollutant emission permits (e.g., for pollutants such as sulfur dioxide,
particulates, nitrides of oxygen, etc.). Included in the permit are maximum allowable air discharges
of pollutants (tons per year). The EPA maintains a file of air pollution controls installed at each
pollution source (e.g., sulfur dioxide scrubber, particulate precipitator, etc.) and collection
efficiencies (e.g., 85%, 97.5%, etc.). Include installation date as an attribute of CONTROL.

Instructions on preparing exercises 3 and 4:

 The database DataClean99.mdb has a number of tables you will use for Exercises 3 and 4.
You may download this database from the Heinz LAN at r:\academic\90-728 into your
personal U: drive or onto a diskette or Zip drive to do this problem.
 You do not need to write queries to solve these problems.
 In reporting these results it is useful to use the Microsoft Word table function.

Exercise 3. The Job*Links program performs job training and placement for individuals in a
variety of areas. Recently it has received information on participants from two other programs
who have been referred to Job*Links. These data are contained in the tables tblEastEnd and
tblNorthSide.

(a) Using the INTERSECTION operation, identify, and list all field values, for the set of records
corresponding to individuals in both job training programs.
(b) Using the SELECT operation, identify, and list all field values, for the set of records in
which OrganizationName = “Deer Lake Medical Association”.

Exercise 4. The Job*Links program is also in the process of computerizing its records which are
currently all hand-written or typewritten. Job*Links staffers would like to create an Access table
listing all students currently in the program and they would also like to create code tables to
standardize data entry. However, the historical records were created by a number of different
individuals and are known to be inconsistent. After some preliminary analysis, all records were
imported into a table called tblStudentOld.

(a) Identify the field(s) that may serve as a primary key.

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(b) Identify the fields in the table tblStudentOld that could serve as codes to be stored in code
tables.
(c) For each potential code field with inconsistent values, derive a set of unique, consistent
codes.