CIS 3730 FALL 2008 Database Management System Project

Transcription

1 CIS 3730 FALL 2008 Database Management System Project Project Grade (40 points) The project will be graded at the end of the course with the following breakdown: Initial Project Proposal - 4 points Weekly Progress Reports - 4 points Preliminary Conceptual Model - 4 points Preliminary Database Design 4 points Final Team Project and Report - 20 points Final Project Presentation - 4 points The total points awarded to a team member can be shifted by as much as 15% (6 points) the other team members assessments of relative contributions. In short, 85% of each person's project grade will be the team grade, 15% will be the individual's contribution grade. Peer evaluation for the team must be done by each team member at the end of the semester by filling in a peer evaluation form. This form is available at the ulearn site for the course and must be filled in and submitted by the date of the last class; it will be available for submission for one week prior to the last class. All deliverables other than progress reports for the project should be submitted electronically as well as submitted in hardcopy format. Each deliverable should include text to explain how the decisions were made and the rationale for those decisions. General Problem and Scope You will have the choice of either designing/developing the textbook project or developing a database application for a real client (external project). In either case the database project should be of reasonable scope that represents original work and can be completed within the semester. Textbook Project: The textbook project is based on the Morgan Importing case that is included in the course textbook. A segment of the case is included at the end of each chapter other than Chapter 1 of the book. Morgan Importing is a company that purchases antiques and home furnishings from stores in many Asian countries and ships them to a warehouse facility in Los Angeles and then sells them to customers throughout USA. The objective of the project is to create a database application to track stores, purchases, shipments, shippers, customers, sales, etc.

2 External Project: It is the responsibility of the student team to find such an application and client. Note: All projects must be implemented with Microsoft SQL Server as the DBMS. Optionally, one can prototype the system using Microsoft Access and even use Access as the front end of the system. SQL Server can be downloaded and installed on one (or all) team members machines from the GSU/CIS MSDNAA web site. An instance of SQL Server 2005 on a virtual server may also be made available for project work. The recommended books on SQL Server would be useful for the project. Milestone 1: Team Formation Team formation and role assignment. This will be done by the second class. Each team will have approximately 3 to 5 members. The team role list (team number, team members with addresses and assigned roles) must be handed in to the professor at the end of the second class. Team logistics and duties. Each team will adhere to the following: Team member roles. You will assign roles to each of your team members (a team member will have multiple roles each team member should have at least one). They do not need to be permanent; you can change roles over the course of the semester. One person may also have multiple roles, but each member must have at least one role. 1. Team Leader: The leader coordinates team meetings, ensures tasks are assigned and, in general, ensures proper team functioning. 2. Documenter: The documenter documents each team meeting, decisions made in meetings, and outcomes of important decisions. He/she ensures that all meetings are properly logged; these logs must be included with your final project report. s should be filed, and the team may consider other electronic collaborative venues, like Sharepoint Team Services. 3. TechGuru: The techguru is the most database/technically knowledgeable person about the technology involved and, where necessary, trains the rest of the team members as needed. 4. Implementation Leader: This person is the main developer/implementation person, ensuring implementation consistency, and keeping versions and backups of the implementation. 5. Client PoC (for External Project): This person is the main Point of Contact with the client. All communications with the client should be done through the client PoC. The client should not be burdened with answering the same questions more than once or with unproductive meetings. 6. Instructor PoC: This person serves as the instructor s contact on behalf of the team. If I have any questions regarding the project, or if you have questions, this person should be available to come and meet with me and/or initiate communication with 2

3 me. Similarly, if I need to communicate with the team, this person will be my primary contact I then expect this person to quickly and effectively communicate with the remaining team members. Team meetings. Starting the week the teams are formed, each team should meet for at least minutes each week to discuss project issues. Hand in your intended meeting schedule along with the team role list. Milestone 2: Project Proposal Due date: before the beginning of class (see class syllabus schedule). The proposal (one document for the entire team) is the first formal document you will hand in for the project. It usually contains about six to eight pages of text in addition to charts and tables. The proposal does not have to be extremely detailed, but it should be detailed enough for a typical executive to approve or disapprove your project. The following information must be included: 1. What is the main purpose of the project? This section should describe the main project goals for the database you will create. 2. Is there an existing process and data system? Is this project replacing an existing system (which could be paper-based, file-based, or even just word-of-mouth based)? Does the client already have some means of performing the tasks? What are the advantages and drawbacks of the current system/method the client has? Where possible, you should not try to create both the processing system as well as the database system. Rather you should be attempting to improve upon an existing system, even if it is somewhat informal in its current state. 3. What kind of data will be stored? Here, describe the data that will be in the system and where it will come from. Be as detailed as possible, including names and descriptions of various types of data. Notice that you are not performing any type of relational database design yet, so it is okay to list everything that will be stored, without any normalization. 4. What functions will this database serve? Describe the types of searches, reports, outputs, and queries that the client expects from the system. This will get refined later, but provide at least some examples of what s being sought from such a system. The proposal should focus on application functionality, rather than implementation details. If the application will support a real operation (external project), the team should interview potential users to ascertain their needs. If the application is for a made-up scenario, any statement of user needs must be supported with acceptable 3

4 reasoning. 5. How much time will this project take? Estimate the number of person-hours this project will take. Itemize the hours according to the different phases of the database development cycle (planning, requirements, DB design, application design, DBMS selection, development, testing, conversions, implementation, and maintenance). Milestone 3: Conceptual Model Due date: before the beginning of class; see class syllabus schedule. For this milestone, you complete the conceptual design of your project. Submit: 1. Domain. A detailed table containing all attribute names, descriptions, and constraints (technical constraints such as data type and length, and business constraints). 2. Conceptual Data Model Diagram. Create an ER diagram that includes all entities, attributes, and relationships. Ensure that you display proper cardinality and participant constraints for every entity-relationship connection. Ensure there are no chasm or fan traps. Ensure that all entities, relationships, and attributes have globally unique names. 3. Business Rules and Assumptions. Prepare a list of well-stated business rules for the ER model and all database design assumptions. 4. Explanation. Include text to explain the documents, the decisions that needed to be made and the rationale for the decisions made. Milestone 4: Database Design Due date: before the beginning of class; see class syllabus schedule. For this milestone, you complete the database design. Include: (1) Tables with information on primary keys, foreign keys, field types, etc. The tables and relationships between them should be essentially the same as will be used in the final application. Normalization to the level of BCNF is expected. (2) Include text to explain the documents, the decisions that needed to be made and the rationale for the decisions made. 4

5 Final Milestone: Implementation and Final Project Report Due date: the last class session. The formal project hardcopy and softcopy document will be due before class starts. The remainder of the class will be a presentation on, and demonstrations of, the project databases by each group. Each group will have approximately 20 minutes to set up, demonstrate the database to the class, and answer questions. This milestone will entail a significant amount of work plan ahead! What is expected from this project? I want to ensure that the project was a significant learning experience in practical database development. The final milestone will consist of a database implementation and a formal document. The implementation should have: 1. Well-organized menus and screens. Users should have access to all the forms and tables necessary to meet project requirements. Users should not, however, have to modify any table directly. 2. Effective queries and data entry. I will look at your Milestone 3 to make sure all queries and data entries you proposed actually work Important Implementation Note (revision of implementation requirements): Given that many students in the class do not have programming knowledge and experience to build a user interface that provides all the required functionality (as per your project), including that need to maintain data, I am making optional the building of the userinterface for your project. Instead, I will expect you to create a large number of SQL 2005 queries (at least 15) for all the needed functionality and data updates. These should include queries across tables. In the project demo, you will be showing the populated tables and demonstrating the execution of these queries. In the project report you should document all these queries as well as the tables on which the queries will be run (populated tables), provide the corresponding SQL statements, show the results of the execution of the queries, and explain the correctness of the results. Earlier, I have been suggesting that you use Access 2007 or Access 2003 as the front end of the database to create a user interface. This is still an option but to create a useful interface that provides all the needed functionality and data maintenance, you will still need to do Visual Basic programming. With this change in the implementation requirements, I will expect that every team has its database as well as the demo queries stored in the SQL Server 2005 DBMS at the virtual server for your team (you will still need to submit zipped version of all files). As a side effect of this change, there will not be any issue of interfacing the SQL Server 2005 database 5

6 with an Access front end and the team virtual server can be used to demonstrate your database (showing the populated tables and running the created queries). Given the above change in what is expected, I would not expect any team to follow the programming option for developing an appropriate and useful user-interface. However, if you still prefer to program an interface, you will still need to do all the things described above. The change in requirements rightly puts emphasis on the database part of course (creating and testing SQL queries) and de-emphasizes the programming of a user interface, which is not part of the course Security. There should be some effective form of database security. 4. Ease of use. Screens and forms should be self-explanatory and simple to use. There should be help functions, including help buttons, status bar messages, or helpful error messages. 5. Data validation. Enforce integrity rules. And when really important (e.g., with primary and foreign keys), provide users with pop-up data to choose from. 6. Number of tables and queries. As a rule-of-thumb, the number of tables should be at least twice the number of team members. This excludes fixed lookup tables. It is not necessary to provide a highly polished interface, but the application should provide all required functionality, including that needed to maintain data. 1 Better projects will make use of DBMS features to provide for data integrity and security. As appropriate, applications should make use of views, triggers, stored procedures, etc. Applications that show only weak evidence of understanding in these matters may not score as well. The formal document should include: 1. Revised Project Proposal, Conceptual Model, and Database Design with necessary changes and improvements and one or two lines of explanation for each comment made by the professor on the earlier versions regarding how you either fixed the problems or why they should be acceptable for your project. Also include the previous submissions with the professor s comments. 2. All code written, including SQL queries. 3. The database. Preferably place your project on an accessible web server and include the web address of the project. 2 Zipped version of all files needed for the project. Don't forget to provide any IDs and passwords we'll need to use your database! All 1 Please see the Implementation Note just after #2 above. 2 This is optional, not required. Your database as well the SQL queries should be available at the SQL Server 2005 DBMS at the virtual server for your team. 6

7 the necessary files must be included such that the working of the project demo can be tested. 4. A formal write-up containing all the milestones as well as: a. what parts of the database (if any) were not implemented and why b. your experiences with the project, what you liked about it, and what you disliked about it, and c. what you learned by doing this project. Note: A couple of sample of a previous class projects will b e provided on the downloads page of the course web site. The samples represent actual projects that were submitted in database courses. However, they may not reflect the current requirements of the project or the best work that can be done in the project. Therefore the sample projects should not be literally followed. 7