Introduction
This assignment requires you to demonstrate knowledge and skills you have acquired throughout this
module by producing a database and a report that addresses the tasks given below. In order to
complete the assignment, you will need to choose an appropriate organization to research and base
your database project on it.
Choosing an appropriate organization
Step 1: select an industry in which you are interested.
For example, commercial airlines, commercial banking, retail, beauty, IT, publishing, hospitality, leisure
and tourism, automotive, construction etc.
Step 2: select one or more organizations in that industry to research.
You should investigate the sort of data they hold and the types of transactions they carry out.
For example, the education college shown in the appendix holds data about the courses, staff, modules,
laboratories and equipment. Their transactions might include allocating modules to courses, staff to
modules, equipment to laboratories and assigning laboratories to courses.
Step 3: You should investigate the requirements that your organization has in the development of a new
software system. This could be particular problems they are trying to solve, processes they want to be
more efficient or new approaches they want to implement to improve their business.
For example, an education college might want to make enrolment of students onto courses easier than
it is currently done. Do not choose a college for your organization as this has been used as an example.
You should reference the businesses or organizations that you investigate.
Step 4. Gathering materials
For your chosen type of organization gather materials relating to their data and transactions. You could
do this by looking online, through personal contacts with someone who works in the industry or simply
by using a particular business’s services.
Materials that you gather might include:
• Invoices
• Receipts
• Order Forms
• Customer Records
• Delivery Notes
• Complaints Forms
• Booking Forms
• Descriptions of daily tasks
• Interviews with staff members
• Company reports
Task 1 – Business Overview and Requirements (10 marks)
You should include an outline of the context in which the organization operates.
For example, a college would operate in an environment in competition with other colleges. You should
outline their day-to-day operations, their data requirements and the types of transactions they carry
out. You might include scans and/or diagrams of any documents you have gathered, which should be
suitably anonymized so as not to show any personal data that might be included. You should explain the
purpose of these documents in the context of the organization.
You should outline the scope of the software project that you will undertake. This should be suitably
ambitious enough to include at least 10 entities in the model. You should make clear what will be
included within the scope of the project and what will not be included. This discussion of scope should
include both data and operational issues.
You should clearly outline or list the requirements of the organization with regard to the database that is
being developed.
Task 2 – Use case diagram (8 marks)
Produce a use case diagram for your organization and an accompanying use case description.
You should use the UML format.
Task 3 –Class Diagram (10)
Draw a Class Diagram to represent the system structure. The Class Diagram should be drawn with a
suitable CASE tool and show attributes, operations, scope and relationship of classes to each other with
multiplicity. The use of abstract classes and sub-classes (where appropriate) will attract additional
marks.
Provide a justification why each class was selected for inclusion, and how its relationship to other classes
was derived.
Task 4 – Activity diagram (7)
Draw an activity diagram to show the classes involved when a user wants to create a new account.
Show which function each class is associated with.
Scenario (Sample)
Lowry College is Further Education College based in Kent, United Kingdom. They specialize in science
education.
They want a database to help them manage teaching and resources for their various courses. This
database will not be concerned, at least initially, with the allocation of students to courses.
Each course will have a number of staff allocated to it. A member of staff might be allocated to more
than one course. Staff are defined by type: Teacher, Technical Support, Administration, Other.
Courses are made up of modules. A module might be part of more than one course. Modules are
defined by type: ‘Core’, ’Elective’ or ‘Optional’. Some modules such as ‘Biochemistry of Life’ are taught
on different courses.
A course might have one or more laboratories associated with it. A laboratory is administered by one
particular course.
A module will be taught in a particular laboratory. A laboratory might host many different modules.
Laboratories have equipment in them. A piece of equipment might be allocated to more than one
laboratory. Equipment is defined by type.
Examples of data are shown in the tables below.