Course exercise guide

General

  • In course exercise students will create a relational database model and implementation
  • Creating a simple user interface for the course exercise is completely optional, but will give deeper understanding on the communication between application and database
  • This course exercise can be done in groups or independently
  • Each group can have up to three (3) students
  • Choose a topic for course exercise that you are interested in (this usually gives more motivation for working)
  • You can choose the tools and your environment freely (for example if you have your own database server, it can be used)
  • Example of possible tools
    • Database: MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL...
    • Database design: MS Visio, MySQL Workbench, pen and paper...
    • User interface (optional): HTML, CSS, JS, jQuery...

Order of implementation

Database design

  1. Create a specification of requirements so that you can get a clear view of the required properties and functions for your database (See Specification of requirements guide)

  2. Create a database model according to specification of requirements (Model should include entities, entity attributes and connections between entities)

  3. Important:

    • If you are uncertain of the topic you have thought about, contact the teacher!
    • The minimum number of entities in model should correlate with the amount of students in group:
      • Group size of 1: three entities at minimum
      • Group size of 2: four entities at minimum
      • Group size of 3: five entities at minimum

Database implementation

  1. Create a database according to database model:
    • Tables
    • Columns
    • Datatypes
    • Table connections with key attributes
    • Possible indexes for tables
  2. Insert at least 10 rows for each table in your database
  3. Create a database script file with .sql extension including the creation queries for database structure and the data (see this guide: https://hantt.pages.labranet.jamk.fi/ttc2020-material/guides/data_export_guide/)
  4. Optional: Create a simple user interface for your database. Interface can be used for presenting the database data (SELECT) as well as manipulating it (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE). Connectivity between database and user interface must be created.

Documentation and course exercise return

  1. Write a report including at least the following parts:
    • Important: Use JAMK's reporting template (can be found here under the 'Other Reports and Writing Assignments' section)!
    • Your topic, authors, course code and student numbers to the front page
    • Idea and solutions behind your designed database model (tables, columns and connections)
    • Summary of the progress (what problems did you face during the progress and how did you solve them?)
    • Your grade proposal with arguments
    • Specification of requirements document as an appendix (see part 1)
    • Database model document (see part 2)
  2. Pack all your course exercise content in one ZIP archive and return it to the return box in Moodle workspace. ZIP archive should include the following:
    • Specification of requirements
    • Database model
    • Script for database creation
    • Report (including the link to working user interface if implemented)