ITPEC IP April 2024 Question 27
In the description below concerning the design process of a relational database, which of the following is an appropriate combination of terms to be inserted into blanks A through C?
Analyze the target business operations, identify the data which is used there, and create B, consisting of entities and A. On the basis of the B created, design C.
Explanation
A: relationships, B: E-R diagram, C: tables — the data model is drawn as an E-R diagram of entities and relationships, and the tables are designed from it.
- •Analyse the business and find the things it keeps data about: customer, order, product. These are entities.
- •Find how they are connected: a customer places orders, an order contains products. These are relationships, with their cardinality (one-to-many and so on).
- •Draw both as an E-R diagram; then turn each entity, and each many-to-many relationship, into a table of the relational database.
Answer (c)
Why not others:
- •(a) — instances are individual occurrences of an entity (one particular customer), not what an E-R diagram connects entities with; and a relational database is designed as tables, not functions
- •(b) — pairs instances with a flowchart; a flowchart shows the order of processing, not the structure of data
- •(d) — a flowchart and functions describe processes, the other half of system design, not the data
Key rule: Data modelling goes business analysis → E-R diagram (entities and relationships) → tables; flowcharts and DFDs model processing, not data structure.
Databases · AI-written, may contain errors
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