A detailed database design example
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A college course may have one or more scheduled sections, or may not have a scheduled section. Attributes of COURSE include Course_ID, Course_Name, and Units. Attributes of SECTION include Section_Number and Semester_ID. Semester_ID is composed of two parts: Semester and Year. Section Number is an integer (such as "1" or "2") that distinguishes one section from another for the same course but does not uniquely identify a section. How did you model SECTION? Why did you choose this way versus alternative ways to model SECTION?
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Solution Summary
This solution provides a very detailed walk through of the database design process for a couple of related tables (course, and section). The solution shows how some of the "obvious" choices lead to problems and how to fix those.
Solution Preview
As stated in the posting, the section information contains a section number and a semester id. The section number is an integer (e.g. "1"). The semester id contains the year and the semester (e.g. "fall2008"). It is possible for a course to have 0 or more sections scheduled.
In order to determine the best way to model this information let's first look at the course information. A course contains an id, a name, and the number of units. Arranged as a table this looks like this:
<pre>
Course_id Course_name Units
-------------------------------------
1 Algebra I 4
2 English I 4
</pre>
The obvious way to add section data is to add additional columns to the table as ...
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