Project IS
Students may form groups of 1-3 students for the project.
One page project proposal requirements
Please see the following four pages concerning where to find a project, what projects are unsuitable, and the originality requirements of the project.
For the one-page proposal on the project chosen, briefly address these points:
· Describe background of the company;
· Describe relevant daily business operations and information needed for or generated from those daily business operations. These daily business operations require information as inputs and/or generate information as outputs so it would benefit from having relevant input and output information stored in a database. For example, if the project chosen is for a store, the daily operation is customer’s making purchases. You would say something like this:
“Customers come to the store to select products they want to buy. When they check out, the system (the store) calculates the total due (relevant daily business operations). After the customer pays for the purchase, the store gives the customer a receipt. These daily business operations require price information for each product and quantity information for each product purchased by the customer (Inputs) in order to calculate the total due. After the transaction is completed, the system (store) stores that this transaction has taken placed, with details about what were bought, how many, and at what prices (outputs).”
· Problems with the current way of information (data) management
· Proposed way of data management (i.e., what data to store in the database and what functionalities to provide in the interface)
· What is your project source? (See Pages 2-3)
· How and from whom would you obtain data requirements for the database?
· Who would be the intended users of your database?
· If possible for your project source, provide sample data (modify any confidential data to preserve confidentiality. In fact, actual data are NOT needed, only fictitious data that look like the actual data are needed.) If sample data come on hard copies of filled-out forms, blank forms filled with fictitious data that look like the real data are sufficient.
You won’t be receiving a grade for this one-page project proposal. The purpose of the report is to communicate your topic selection to me so I can help you decide whether or not the project is appropriate. Hand in your hard-copy project proposal in class on or before the due date listed in Canvas and in the Syllabus. Electronic submissions to Canvas are also accepted.
Avoid unsuitable projects (See Page 4). You may change your project idea later if you later find a better project idea. Please provide another one-page project proposal as described above if that happens.
Submitting this concept of a database for approval indicates that you claim the originality of this project (See Pages 4-5).
In the next stage of the project, you’ll need to collect detailed information about what data are needed for those businesses operations, what data are generated that need to be stored in the database, and how data relate to each other, that is, business rules concerning the data. When designing the ERD, having sample data will help you understand the data better. However, when eventually submitting your database for grading, fictitious data are sufficient.
Size of the project
The ideal size of the project is 5-7 tables.
Database Project Sources
Decide on an application for which you’ll design the database. Choose a project where the main purpose is to store and retrieve operational data. The preferred project is one intended for some real user(s) (including family and friends). A database intended for your own use is ok. A made up database with imagined users is not recommended though acceptable. Here I discuss four sources of database projects (Pages 2-3). Unsuitable projects are discussed on Page 4.
Project Source 1: Organic
The most organic source of a database project is through your network of friends, family members, acquaintances, or your own work place. Many solo or other types of small businesses do not already have a database for their day-to-day business operations. Even some medium or large sized companies may need a small database for non-mission-critical things like employee training, various task forces, internal “instance” reports and such, even though they usually have databases for their core day-to-day business operations.
Here are some organically sourced project examples done by students in the past:
· A database for a bed-and-breakfast place owned by a student’s parents. The database keeps track of reservations, checking in, checking out, and pricing.
· A database for a tree farm owned by a student’s parents that stores information about various trees grown on the farm, customer orders, and tree deliveries.
· A database for a daycare center operated by a student’s spouse that stores information about the children, check-in and check-out times on each day for each child, and their account balances and payment information.
· A database that stores prospective real estate clients, viewings, and mailings information for a student’s friend.
· A database that stores information about employee training, courses they took, and certifications information for a student’s workplace.
· A database that stores information about various small medical devices that patients can rent out for a student’s workplace.
· A database that keeps track of various computing devices of employees, licenses of applications, connections to various servers etc. for a student’s workplace
Project Source 2: Reverse engineering a database
If you really can’t find an organic project, before deciding on a made-up project, try reverse engineering. Reverse engineering is to design a database based on your interactions with an existing database on the desktop or on the Web. For example, if you work as a human resources specialist at a company and use a human resources management software, you can design a database based on your knowledge of the type of information stored in the human resources database and the type of interactions it affords the user. If you work or worked at a store that sells and resells computer games and have used the sales database, you can design a database based on your knowledge and interactions with that database. You may also interact with databases on the web (example, Amazon.com’s vast database). You can design the database (a part of it) based on your interactions with the ecommerce site.
Do Review Page 4 for originality requirements for reverse reengineering.
Project Source 3: Preferred way of making up a database
If you still can’t find an organic project and can’t find a database to reverse engineer, the preferred way of making up a database project is to base your database on a real business that you’re familiar with. As mentioned before, medium sized or large companies usually already have databases to support their day-to-day core business operations. If you work or worked for a company and are familiar with the core business, you may make up a database that would support the daily operations of that company or that would support some other business operations that you’re familiar with.
Project Source 4: Desperate way of making up a project
If no one in your network seems in need of a database, you have not interacted with a database that could offer reverse engineering, you have not worked for any company that used a database, and you have not worked in a company that can give you inspirations for a database idea, and you don’t know anyone who may be able to help you get a project idea, in short, if you are desperate, then imagine an organization or a business and imagine how that organization or business work and proceed to design your database. If you decide to proceed with a made-up database, your database needs to be substantially different from any of the examples or homework problems that I have written up. Also talk to me first before choosing this route.
Unsuitable Projects
2. Database problems involving other main tasks such as synchronizing data from multiple databases, integrating one database into another, automatic uploading of data from an outside source etc. are interesting and practical database problems in general. However, they are not the topics of this course and therefore are not suitable for the class project.
3. If two teams’ projects are too similar to each other’s, they are not suitable.
Originality Requirement
No matter what your source is for the database, it must satisfy the originality requirement as discussed below.
Each student or team is required to collect and compile their own information requirements, design the ERD, design the tables, and implement the database in ACCESS and Oracle. A project where information requirements are laid out already in writing or where the ERD is already given, or where the tables are already designed is not acceptable. When you submit a project idea for me to approve, the assumption is that the information requirements do not already exist in a document written by someone else (changing a few things here and there is not considered sufficiently different). If this is not the case, you’re required to disclose that information to me, before the project is approved.
Sometimes a student may have already done (or is doing) an original project for a different course. If the project idea is original to the student, the student may use that same idea in this course with some penalty points. This is because the student is using the same work to receive credits in two different courses. If the database in the other course is not the original work of the student, for example, when the instructor of that course gives the information requirements and the ERD, that database can’t be used as the class project.
Reverse engineering: If a student intends to design the database based on his/her interactions with a user interface, it is acceptable if 1) the student discloses that reverse engineering is used based on the available (often web-based) interface, 2) there is no written document of information requirements available to the student, and 3) there is no corresponding ERD or table design available to the student. Situations where these conditions are not satisfied are unacceptable project situations.
Borrowed ideas: If a student finds project ideas from a written source, the project is acceptable if 1) the student discloses that the idea is borrowed from a written source and submits the written source with the project submission, 2) the student compiles information requirements using his/her own language and the resulting document is substantially smaller (at least a third smaller in number of words), and 3) there is no corresponding ERD or table design available to the student. Situations where these conditions are not satisfied are unacceptable project situations.
Other limitations: Other situations not discussed here may or may not be acceptable. When attempting a project in non-standard situations (the standard situation is one where all elements are original and the student is starting from ground zero), it is the student’s responsibility to disclose all information known to the student concerning what’s already been done or will be done by others by the project due date about a particular application environment.
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