DB211

Unit 1 Assignment A
FIGURE P1.1: The file structure for Problems 14

1.

How many records does the file contain? How many fields are there per record?
a. Records: 7
b. Fields: 5

2.

What problem would you encounter if you wanted to produce a listing by city?
How would you solve this problem by altering the file structure?
a. List by City: Youd have to parse the string in order to isolate the city. A
time consuming process that consumes cpu cycles if performed often.
b. Solve: Put the city into its own field. All those values should be in their
own fields.

3.

If you wanted to produce a listing of the file contents by last name, area code,
city, state, or zip code, how would you alter the file structure?
a. I would put each of the values into their own field. That way they are
stored separately but can be compiled as needed for display purposes.

4.

What data redundancies do you detect? How could those redundancies lead to
anomalies?
a. There are some names and phone numbers that are identical. Adopting the
process of database normalization will resolve potential risks/issues.

5.

Identify and discuss the serious data redundancy problems exhibited by the file
structure shown in Figure P1.5.
a. There are too many values that match. Queries to the table could lead to
incorrect records being returned. Writes to the table could corrupt data if
the wrong record is chosen. Database normalization can help to eliminate
the redundancy issues.

FIGURE P1.5: The file structure for Problems 58

6.

Looking at the EMP_NAME and EMP_PHONE contents in Figure P1.5, what

change(s) would you recommend?
a. Order the records by last name by breaking up the name. Bascially
making the data more atomic would help. The same could be done for the
phone number.

7.

Identify the various data sources in the file you examined in Problem 5.
a. Employee data, project information, job information.

8.

Given your answer to Problem 7, what new files should you create to help
eliminate the data redundancies found in the file shown in Figure P1.5?
a. Data should be separated out into different tables. There should be an
employee table, job table, and project table.