Lab #4:  Data Models and Entity Relationship Diagrams

Date:    Tuesday, October 3, 2006
Due:     Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The process of analyzing a problem domain and creating a diagram to represent it is called "data modeling".  The purpose of this assignment is to develop a data model for your unique problem domain.  Take your domain description from last lab and "mine" it for candidate entities and relationships.  Identify useful attributes of the entity classes that emerge from your domain and represent all this in an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD).  Use the author's examples from Chapter 5 to draw your ERD.  The author uses a program called ERWin to draw his diagrams.  You can use either Microsoft Visio (but you'll need to change the drawing type to Relational) or PowerPoint or Dia (an open-source diagramming tool popular on Unix and Linux systems) or whatever drawing tool you like.  The main focus is to get all the details correct on your diagram.

Once your diagram is done, write up a few paragraphs that describe all the features from your problem domain that is represented in your ERD.  Be careful to do a complete job with your descriptions, pointing out structure that your data model allows and what it disallows.