FIT9132 Introduction to Databases
Assignment 1 Logical - ReadMore Community Library (RCL)
Purpose
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Given the provided case study from Assignment 1 - Conceptual, and additional
forms/documents related to the case study, students will be asked to transform the information provided into a sound database design and implement it in Oracle. This task covers learning outcomes:
1. Apply the theories of the relational database model.
2. Develop a sound relational database design.
3. Implement a relational database based on a sound database design.
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Your task
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This is an open-book group task (students will work in groups of two or three, with members selected randomly). The final output for this task will be a logical model implemented in the Oracle RDBMS
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Value
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30% of your total marks for the unit
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INSTRUCTIONS
Please note that your group must not start the modelling task until each member
individually has completed the Applied 6 logical model for the property rental case
study, pushed it to their private repo, and compared your answer with that provided in the sample solution to check their understanding. The completion of this individual
task will be checked via your GitLab account pushes.
This task continues the work you have started in Assignment 1 Conceptual by
refining/extending the model you developed and implementing it as a set of tables under your Monash Oracle database account.
Since this is an ongoing development process based on your assignment 1 conceptual
submission and marker feedback, you must ensure that they remain confidential and are only seen by your group members and the unit teaching staff.
The Assignment 1 Conceptual brief must be read in conjunction with the Assignment 1 Logical brief (this document) - i.e. your final model must encompass both sets of
requirements. You may modify your Assignment 1 Conceptual model in any manner you
wish as you work through Assignment 1 Logical, provided your final model meets both
requirements. Your Assignment 1 Conceptual model will not be submitted or assessed again; any modifications you make to your conceptual model are only part of the group working
towards your logical model.
In developing your final logical data model, composite attributes present in your conceptual
model must be expanded into their component simple attributes unless explicitly directed otherwise. If the supplementary material presented in this document does not guide you in deciding the components, you may make any reasonable decision on their simple
component attributes.
Further discussions with Read More Community Library have revealed the points listed below:
● RCL has expanded the previous details supplied to indicate that, as well as Counter Reserve status; they assign a status value to indicate if a book is:
○ On Counter Reserve,
○ On Loan, or
○ Available for borrowing.
● RCL assigns a Borrower Class to each registered borrower. The classes which they
currently use are Adult, Child and Organisation. A borrower’s class controls how many books the borrower can have on loan at any time and their standard loan period in days (the number of days a book can be borrowed). RCL has indicated that they wish to add other classes of borrowers in the future.
● If a borrower has an overdue loan, RCL prevents the borrower from borrowing any
further books (bans them) until the outstanding loan is returned. On returning the
outstanding loan, the borrower is charged a fine based on the number of days they are late (the number of days late is not required to be stored in the system). RCL has
indicated that only around 1.8% of loans are returned late.
● If a book copy is currently on loan, a borrower may reserve it and be informed when it becomes available. To use this service, a borrower must provide a contact phone number so they can be informed when the copy becomes available. RCL records the date and time the borrower placed the reserve. A given book copy may have several outstanding reserves against it. When the book is available, the borrower with the oldest reserve is informed via a telephone call and a loan is arranged. This borrower’s reserve will then be removed from the system.
● RCL has book copies that are stolen, lost, or damaged and can thus no longer be assigned in a loan. They have asked for your advice on how their database should handle such copies and ask that this be included in your design.
● RCL has indicated they wish to treat the branch address, LGA contact name, and all phone numbers as simple attributes.
Read More Community Library has supplied the following two forms as samples of those used within their business.
You should note:
● The data shown is incomplete and only representative of the type of data for each item. The forms contain fabricated data, so you are aware of typical requirements.
● Several examples of a form maybe provided to show you the variety of the data; you only need to do ONE normalisation per type of report.
(i) ReadMore Community Library Catalogue Search Output:
Sample A:
Sample B:
(ii) ReadMore Community Library Borrowers Quarterly Report:
REMEMBER to keep up to date with the Ed Assignment 1 Logical forum, where further clarifications may be posted (this forum is to be treated as your client).
Please be careful not to publicly post anything that includes your reasoning, logic, or any part of your work to this forum. Doing so violates Monash plagiarism/collusion rules and carries significant academic penalties. If you need to discuss your approach, ensure you use Ed private posts.
You can make assumptions if needed; however, they must align with the details in this brief and the assignment forums and be documented (see the required submission files). Other than surrogate keys, where appropriate, you must remember the design adage "All that is required has been included, and all that has been included is required", i.e. you must not add features outside the requirements expressed in the brief.
Group Communication
Your group MUST use your private group channel in MS Teams for all group
communication during this assignment, which is not face-to-face. Microsoft Teams
provides facilities to support group interaction, including chat, group email, shared desktop, meetings, video/audio calling and shared files.
Activity in your private group channel is only visible to your group members and the teaching staff. It is important that you use Microsoft Teams for your group activities, as your marker
may need to check the group members' contributions to the task and attendance at
meetings—such a decision will be based on the activity in your private group channel ONLY.
Git Management
Ensure your group name is on every page of any document you submit. If a document is multipage (such as the normalisation), please include page numbers on every page.
GIT STORAGE
Your work for these tasks MUST be saved in your group's local working directory (repo) in the Ass1 Logical folder. As a start, in your local repo, create a folder named rcl_model and then in this folder, save your model as rcl_logical, i.e. save it as rcl_logical.dmd inside the rcl_model folder.
Your model must be regularly pushed to the FIT GitLab server to build a clear history of its development. At least nine pushes of your Oracle Data Modeller model to the FIT Git Lab server are required. Please note that nine pushes is a minimum; in practice, we would expect significantly more. This number of pushes must be evenly distributed amongst group
members. All commits must include a meaningful commit message that clearly describes what the particular commit is about and must be correctly assigned to a valid GitLab
author.
Groups must regularly check that their pushes have been successful by logging in to the FIT
Git Lab server's web interface; you must not simply assume they are working. Before submission via Moodle, log in to the Git Lab server's web interface and ensure your submission files are present.
GIT automatically maintains a history of all files pushed to the server. You do not need to, and MUST not, add a version name to your various versions. Please ensure you use the same name for all versions of a particular file.
Groups MUST NOT use REVERT or RESET when working on this assignment task. Doing so could potentially cause severe errors in your remote repo. If you have problems pushing to the remote group repo, move your current local group repo out of the way (to a new folder) and reclone your group repo as discussed in the Applied 2 lesson (section
A2-1.2).
Working on Oracle Data Modeler Models in your Group Repo
If multiple students work on a logical model simultaneously, merging these changes can be difficult since the files have complex XML structures. For this reason, you must take a simple approach to working on the model - lock the remote repo when making changes. Only
one member of your group can and must work on the model at a particular time.
Whenever a particular student wishes to work on the model, they should go to the Git Server web interface and check if another group member has locked the Ass1 Logical folder.
If the folder is locked, you must not carry out any work on the assignment task.
If it has not been locked, you can proceed to lock the folder by selecting "Lock":
Ensure you are in the correct folder when this lock is applied.
You will know the items are locked as each will have a lock icon attached to it:
If you hover over the padlock icon, you can see who has the folder locked currently.
After locking the folder, you MUST do a pull (no changes must be made in your group local repo until the lock is in place AND this pull has been completed). When you have completed your work and pushed it to Git, you should return to the Git web interface and unlock the folder:
The model must not be completed by only one member of the group. In assessing
your group's work, we will examine the commit log to ensure all group members have contributed to building the model.