The Director of the University Accommodation Office requires you to design a database to assist with the administration of the office. The requirements collection and analysis phase of the database design process based on the Director's view has provided the following requirements specification for the Accommodation Office database.
1. The data stored on each full-time student includes the matriculation number, name (first and last name), home address (street, city/town, postcode), date of birth, sex, category of student (for example, first year undergraduate (1UG), postgraduate (PG)), nationality, smoker (yes or no), special needs, any additional comments, current status (placed/waiting), and what course the student is studying on. The student information stored relates to those currently renting a room and those on the waiting list. Students may rent a room in a university owned hall of residence or student flat. When a student joins the University he or she is assigned to a member of staff who acts as his or her Advisor of Studies. The Advisor of Studies is responsible for monitoring the student's welfare and academic progress. The data held on a student's Advisor includes their full name, position, name of department, internal telephone number, and room number.
2. Each hall of residence has a name, address, telephone number, and a hall manager who supervises the operation of the hall. The halls provide only single rooms, which have a room number, place number, and monthly rent rate. The place number uniquely identifies each room in all the halls controlled by the Accommodation Office and is used when renting a room to a student.
3. The Accommodation Office also offers student flats. These flats are fully furnished and provide single room accommodation for groups of 3, 4. or 5 students. The information held on student flats includes a flat number, address, and the number of single bedrooms available in each flat. The flat number uniquely identifies each flat. Each bedroom in a flat has a monthly rent rate, a room number, and a place number. The place number uniquely identifies each room available in all student flats and is used when renting a room to a student.
4. A student may rent a room in a hall or student flat for various periods of time. New lease agreements are negotiated at the start of each academic year with a minimum rental period of one semester (15 weeks) and a maximum rental period of one year, which includes Semesters 1, 2, and the Summer Semester. Each individual lease agreement between a student and the Accommodation Office is uniquely identified using a lease number. The data stored on each lease includes the lease number, duration of the lease (given as semesters), name, and matriculation number of the student, place number, room number, address details of the hall or student flat, the date the student wishes to enter the room, and the date the student wishes to leave the room (if known).
5. Student flats are inspected by staff on a regular basis to ensure that the accommodation is well maintained. The information recorded for each inspection is the name of the member of staff who carried out the inspection, the date of inspection, an indication of whether the property was found to be in a satisfactory condition (yes or no), and any additional comments.
6. Some information is also held on members of staff of the Accommodation Office and includes the staff number, name (first and last name), home address (street, city/town, postcode), date of birth, sex, position (for example, Hall Manager, Administrative Assistant, Cleaner), and location (for example, Accommodation Office or Hall).
7. The Accommodation Office also stores a limited amount of information on the courses run by the University including the course number, course title (including year), course leader's name, internal telephone number, and room number, and department name. Each student is associated with a single course.
8. Whenever possible, information on a student's next-of-kin is stored which includes the name, relationship, address (street, city/town, postcode), and contact telephone number.
QUESTIONS
1. Create and document the above scenario in an EER diagram showing entities, relationships, generalisation/specialisation relationships, cardinalities and list any assumptions that you make.
2. Create an ORM model of the above.
3. Create a functional data model (FDM) of the above.
4. Compare and contrast the modelling capabilities of the EER, the ORM, and the FDM. Comment particularly on their usefulness or otherwise in modelling this scenario.