Quick simple DB question!

K1LLSW1TCH · 21 Oct 2009 at 08:25

Hello peeps, well, It's 25 past 8 and I have to get this done by nine. What I have, is a simple Database diagram question but I haven't the first clue about it and the lecturer is going to put my ***** in a vice if I don't at least attempt this question. So what I was asking was if somebody could just tell me what the entities should be, and what should relate to what for the following question. Any help is greatly, greatly appreciated. Cheers in advance and here's the question:

Students take one or more, full-time or part-time
courses. The courses are run by departments and it is possible for a course to be run by
more than one department. Each course consists of a number of units. Lecturers teach
the units, and in some circumstances more than one lecturer will teach a unit. Lecturers,
of course teach on more than one unit. Since the introduction of 'modular' courses, it is
possible for one unit to be included on more than one course. A lecturer may be a course
leader for a particular course.

m4cc45 · 21 Oct 2009 at 08:41

Design it in excel then change it to a DB..

So you'd want:

Student (Text) / Full time (Tick Box) / Part time (Tick Box) / Course Name (Text) / Teacher (Text) / Leader (Tick Box) / Department (Text)

Just have them as tick boxes. Very basic I know.

M.

K1LLSW1TCH · 21 Oct 2009 at 08:46

Cheers for the reply. I'm appreciative that you gave it a go for me but I think my lecturer is after something specific called a relational diagram or something, I can't quite remember the name because I've only had 2 lectures on it.

As long as I've got something to whack down on some paper then that's cool so thanks for the reply. Oh and just so everyone knows I'm not a total retard, I'll tell the lecturer that I don't know what the hell I'm doing so maybe I can get a better understanding on the subject.

Thanks mate.

Tilluss · 21 Oct 2009 at 08:46

m4cc45 said:
Design it in excel then change it to a DB..

So you'd want:

Student (Text) / Full time (Tick Box) / Part time (Tick Box) / Course Name (Text) / Teacher (Text) / Leader (Tick Box) / Department (Text)

Just have them as tick boxes. Very basic I know.

M.

Thats not a Database Diagram.... I dont knwo what your thinking about

To the OP, the question tells you all of the entities and what should relate to what, you just need to grab a pencil and some paper, list them and draw lines to each to find how everything relates. Once you have all of the lines connected that will be your diagram, very basic and sh***y i know, but then you can smarten it up after

K1LLSW1TCH · 21 Oct 2009 at 09:09

Again, thanks for the reply. I know what I have to do, I just don't know what the entities will be, what the keys should be, the primary keys, the foreign keys, the fields and the relations.

I've had a bash on paper but I know it's completely wrong because Access can't do many to many relationships.

m4cc45 · 21 Oct 2009 at 10:13

Aye I'm not going to do the OP's home work..

I'd design it in excel then bang it in access if it's only a diagram then you only need to do it in even Word or something... Primary Key is going to be hard - perhaps a unique field such as Student ID number (student name, even full name, could be dupicated).

Do you really needs lots of relationships as I see no real benefit unless you're talking about multiple databases.

M.