UNIVERSITY OF KWAZULU-NATAL WESTVILLE AND PIETERMARITZBURG CAMPUSES SCHOOL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS & TECHNOLOGY SYSTEMS ANALYSIS & DESIGN

(ISTN211) TEST 2 May 2011 DURATION: 1 hour (60 minutes) INTERNAL EXAMINERS: MARKS: 50

Mr S. Ranjeeth (Pietermaritzburg), Mr D. Achmad (Westville)

INSTRUCTIONS: 1. This paper consists of 3 pages. Please ensure that you have them all. 2. There are 2 questions in this test. Students are required to answer both questions. 3. Do not write in the right hand margins - these are for marking purposes only.

Question One 1.1

(22 marks, 20 minutes)

Draw the relevant entities together with the relationships showing the cardinality and optionality of the relationship. You do not need to show any attributes or primary or foreign keys in your solution. (a) A university student may write many tests. Each university test must be written by at least one student. (3 marks)

(b)

A lecture venue may be used by many courses during the semester. Each course is lectured at a single lecture venue. (3 marks)

UKZN - ISTN211 (Systems Analysis & Design) - Test 2 5th May 2011

1.2

As there is a shortage of medical staff in South Africa, nurses can be assigned work duties for one or more clinics during a working month. During this period each nurse must be assigned to at least one clinic. Each clinic can have one or more nurses assigned to work at the clinic and each nurse must always be assigned to a clinic at any one time.

Figure One: Nurse and Clinic entities The questions below refer to the relationship between the Nurse and Clinic entities as illustrated in Figure One above (a) What is the cardinality of this relationship? (2 marks)

Many to Many (b) Redraw the entities showing the relationship, together with the cardinality and optionality as it would appear in an initial ERD. (2 marks)

(c)

Provide a full written explanation of how this type of relationship is handled in ERD modelling. (4 marks)

A Many-To-Many relationship has been identified here between nurse and clinic. This cannot be implemented in a database. This will need to be transformed into a third entity (intersection/bridge/association entity) together with two One-To-Many relationships. From an implementation perspective, in order to create the intersection/bridge/ association entity, the primary keys of both the Nurse and Clinic entities have to be included as foreign keys in the intersection/bridge/association entity. In some instances, a combination of both these foreign keys, serve as a composite primary key of the intersection entity.

UKZN - ISTN211 (Systems Analysis & Design) - Test 2 5th May 2011

1.3

The following information in Table One below pertains to nurses and their assignment to work duty at various clinics in KwaZulu Natal. Table One: Nurse Work Duty Assignments Nurse Firstname Paula Sarah Tiger Paula (a) Nurse Surname Jones Mkhize Khuni Jones Work Duty Vaccinations Theatre Vaccinations Vaccinations Clinic Name Jacobs Congella Umhlanga Umhlanga Clinic Telephone 031 246578 031 546721 031 112244 031 112244

If this information had to be stored in the current format in a database, what would you regard as the biggest problem from a data processing perspective? (2 marks) No primary key

(b)

Identify and describe three possible anomalies that exist in this table. Redraw the following table in your answer booklet to format your answer. Anomaly Description Cannot insert a new nurse without first providing a duty title and a clinic name. Paula Jones gets married and changes her surname, but it has to change in two places. What would happen if only one record is only change, thereby leaving an inconsistency / redundant record. Delete Sarah Mkhize and you will lose the work duty Theatre and the clinic name Congella. (6 marks)

Anomaly Type Identified Insertion Update

Deletion

UKZN - ISTN211 (Systems Analysis & Design) - Test 2 5th May 2011

Question Two

(28 marks, 40 minutes)

Read the following background information in order to understand the requirements for the construction of an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for the system to be specified.

Background Information ( not required as part of the solution)

The School of Information System & Technology (IS&T) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal will be hosting the South African Computer Lecturers Association (SACLA) conference in June 2011. The SACLA conference is an event where computer lecturers from South African tertiary institutes submit research articles from within the field of computing to the SACLA conference organisers. These articles are reviewed by the SACLA Review Committee and those articles that meet the requirements of the conference are accepted for presentation to an audience at the SACLA conference. Since there may be many articles accepted, the SACLA conference is divided into sessions of 3 hours each and each session will contain approximately 6 presentations. The SACLA conference organisers have requested the services of a systems analyst to construct an ERD that will be used to build a database management system that will provide access to important conference data. In the system specifications, the terms academic and author refer to the same person. System Specifications The system must store details of academics/authors as well as details of the research paper that each author was involved in. SACLA conference organisers have stipulated that the first name, surname, e-mail address and name of the academic institute that the author is employed at, is required. It should be noted that each author must be involved in the writing of at least one research paper. However, each author could also be involved in the writing of more than one research paper. Also, each research paper could be jointly written by more than one author, although a maximum of 3 authors is the norm. Each authors involvement in a research paper should be described according to the authors level of involvement. The level of involvement could be described as a primary author or a secondary author of a research paper. This information should be recorded. Details of members of the SACLA Review Committee (SRC) need to be stored. Members of the SRC may be involved in the reviewing of many research articles. However, each research article has to be reviewed by only a single member of the SRC. There may be members of the SRC who may not be required to review any articles. It is important to know which member of the SRC was responsible for reviewing a specific research paper. Details of each session of the SACLA conference have to be stored. These would include venue, date, time and chairperson of the session. Only members of the SRC are allowed to chair sessions as the SACLA conference. SRC members are allowed to chair more than one session and there may be SRC members who do not chair any sessions at all. Each session

UKZN - ISTN211 (Systems Analysis & Design) - Test 2 5th May 2011

involves the presentation of 6 research papers. Each research paper can only be presented at a single session. Details of the person presenting the paper are not required since the primary author is responsible for the research papers presentation at the SACLA conference. Draw a final ERD to model the system requirements for the SACLA conference. Your solution must include all relevant entities, primary keys, non-key attributes, relationships and cardinalities. You may use your discretion in determining some of the non-key attributes (28 marks)

24 marks for entities, attributes, relationships and primary and foreign keys 4 marks for correct overall solution partial marks awarded at discretion of examiner