WOLLEGA UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
(4rd YEAR – Computer Stream)
COURSE: Database Management Systems (ECEg4172)

Question 1:
Alice has a large DVD movie collection. Her friends like to borrow her DVD's, and she needs a way to keep
track of who has what. She maintains a list of friends, identified by unique FID's (friend identifiers) and a list of
DVD's, identified by DVDID's (DVD identifiers). With each friend is the name and the all-important telephone
numbers which she can call to get the DVD back. With each DVD is the star actor name and title. Whenever a
friend borrows a DVD, Alice will enter that fact into her database along with the date borrowed. Whenever the
DVD gets returned, that fact, too, gets noted along with the date returned. Alice wants to keep a complete
history of her friends' borrowing habits so that she can ask favors of the heavy borrowers (or perhaps refuse to
make further loans to those who habitually don't return them quickly).

Question 2:
Assume we have the following application that models soccer teams, the games they play, and the players in
each team. In the design, we want to capture the following:
• We have a set of teams, each team has an ID (unique identifier), name, main stadium, and to which city this
team belongs.
• Each team has many players, and each player belongs to one team. Each player has a number (unique
identifier), name, DoB, start year, and shirt number that he uses.
• Teams play matches, in each match there is a host team and a guest team. The match takes place in the
stadium of the host team.
• For each match we need to keep track of the following:
o The date on which the game is played
o The final result of the match
o The players participated in the match. For each player, how many goals he scored, whether or not he took
yellow card, and whether or not he took red card.
o During the match, one player may substitute another player. We want to capture this substitution and the
time at which it took place.
• Each match has exactly three referees. For each referee we have an ID (unique identifier), name, DoB, years
of experience. One referee is the main referee and the other two are assistant referee.
Design an ER diagram to capture the above requirements. State any assumptions you have that affects your
design (use the back of the page if needed). Make sure cardinalities and primary keys are clear.

Question 3:
Consider the following requirements for a university library database:
The database will support the services that the university library provides to its customers. These can only be
students and members of the university staff. Each library customer is identified by university card. The items
available from the library include books, conference proceedings and scientific magazines. Books and
conference proceedings have one or more authors, a title, and a unique ISBN number. Note that there might be
more than one copy of the same book or conference proceedings in the library. Scientific magazines have a title
and a unique ISSN number. Copies of books and conference proceedings may be checked out but not scientific
magazines. These have to be used in the library. All items, which may be checked out, are identified by unique
library codes assigned to them after their purchase. The maximum borrowing period allowed for each of them is
different. Library users may borrow more than one item at the same time. The starting and the due date of each
loan must be recorded.
Design an ER-diagram for this database. Specify keys, mapping cardinalities, participation constraints and
existential dependencies in your diagram. If it is necessary, due to incompleteness in the previous specification,
state clearly the assumptions justifying your modeling choices.

Question 4:
Consider the following requirements for a database that is to be developed for a retailer:
Information is to be kept about customers, products and orders. Each customer has a unique customer number,
one or more addresses, and an account. This account is used to provide credit facilities to the customer. Each
account has a credit limit and a balance indicating the amount of money that the customer currently owes to the
company. Customers may qualify for discount rates subject to the total value of the products they have
purchased so far. Therefore, the company needs to keep a record of the value of the products a customer has
purchased from it. Customers place orders. An order may include one or more products. For each of these
products the order indicates the quantity of the product ordered. Also, each order has a unique number and two
dates. One of these dates indicates when the order was made and the other indicates when the goods need to be
delivered. Products have unique numbers and a short description. For each of them the company maintains an
indicator of the quantity currently in stock.
Design an ER-diagram for this database. Specify keys, mapping cardinalities, participation constraints and
existential dependencies (if necessary) in your diagram. In cases where the above requirement specification is
ambiguous, state clearly the assumptions which you made and which justify your modeling choices.

Question 5:
A database is to be designed for a Car Rental Co. (CRC). The information required includes a description of
cars, subcontractors (i.e. garages), company expenditures, company revenues and customers. Cars are to be
described by such data as: make, model, year of production, engine size, fuel type, number of passengers,
registration number, purchase price, purchase date, rent price and insurance details. It is the company policy not
to keep any car for a period exceeding one year. All major repairs and maintenance are done by subcontractors
(i.e. franchised garages), with whom CRC has long-term agreements. Therefore the data about garages to be
kept in the database includes garage names, addressees, range of services and the like. Some garages require
payments immediately after a repair has been made; with others CRC has made arrangements for credit
facilities. Company expenditures are to be registered for all outgoings connected with purchases, repairs,
maintenance, insurance etc. Similarly the cash inflow coming from all sources - car hire, car sales, insurance
claims - must be kept of file.CRC maintains a reasonably stable client base. For this privileged category of
customers special credit card facilities are provided. These customers may also book in advance a particular car.
These reservations can be made for any period of time up to one month. Casual customers must pay a deposit
for an estimated time of rental, unless they wish to pay by credit card. All major credit cards care accepted.
Personal details (such as name, address, telephone number, driving licence, number) about each customer are
kept in the database.
Question 6:
A publishing company produces scientific books on various subjects. The books are written by authors who
specialize in one particular subject. The company employs editors who, not necessarily being specialists in a
particular area, each take sole responsibility for editing one or more publications. A publication covers
essentially one of the specialist subjects and is normally written by a single author. When writing a particular
book, each author works with on editor, but may submit another work for publication to be supervised by other
editors. To improve their competitiveness, the company tries to employ a variety of authors, more than one
author being a specialist in a particular subject.

Question 7:

Consider the ER diagram shown above for part of a BANK database. Each bank can have multiple branches,
and each branch can have multiple accounts and loans.
a) List the (nonweak) entity types in the ER diagram.
b) Is there a weak entity type? If so, give its name, partial key, and identifying relationship.
c) What constraints do the partial key and the identifying relationship of the weak entity type specify in
this diagram?
d) List the names of all relationship types, and specify the (min, max) constraint on each participation of an
entity type in a relationship type. Justify your choices.
e) List concisely the user requirements that led to this ER schema design.
f) Suppose that every customer must have at least one account but is restricted to at most two loans at a
time, and that a bank branch cannot have more than 1000 loans. How does this show up on the (min,
max) constraints?
Answer the Following questions.

1. Define the following terms: entity, attribute, attribute value, relationship instance, composite attribute,

multivalued attribute, derived attribute, complex attribute, key attribute, value set (domain).

2. What is an entity type? What is an entity set? Explain the differences among an entity, an entity type, and an

entity set.

3. What is a relationship type? Explain the differences among a relationship instance, a relationship type, and a

relationship set.

4. What is a participation role? When is it necessary to use role names in the description of relationship types?

5. When is the concept of a weak entity used in data modeling? Define the terms owner entity type, weak entity

type, identifying relationship type, and partial key.

 taff also generate reports that has readers id, registration no of report, book no and
return/issue info.