ERD Tutorial 2

Question 1

Consider the following information about a university database:

• Professors have an SSN, a name, DOB (date of birth), address, several phone numbers, age,
rank and speciality.
• Projects have a project number, a sponsor name (e.g., NSF), a starting date, an ending date,
and a budget.
• Graduate students have an SSN, a name, an age, and a degree program (e.g., M.S. or Ph.D.).
• Professors can manage multiple projects, but one project can be managed by only one
professor.
• Each project is worked on by one or more graduate students (known as the project’s research
assistants). The number of hours spent by each student on each project needs to be recorded.
• Departments have a department number, a department name, and a main office.
• Professors work in one or more departments, and for each department that they work in, a
time percentage is associated with their job.
• Each graduate student has another, more senior graduate student (known as a student advisor)
who advises him or her on what courses to take.

Design and draw an ER diagram that captures the information about the university. Illustrate
all entities, attributes, relationships, cardinalities and other constraints. Write down any
assumptions made.

Question 2
A database is to be designed for a college to monitor students’ progress throughout their course
of study. The students are enrolled in a particular course. For each course a well defined set of
admission criteria is specified; for instance, for the "Computer Science" course, 3 A-levels are
required. Additionally, each course is described by its code, name, duration and level of study.

In a department, there are several courses which are run. Each course consists of a set of
modules, which are either compulsory or optional, but not both. A certain module is described by
its code, name, a short syllabus, type (lectured, seminar-like, project) and year of study for which
it was intended. For optional modules, the number of times it has been offered in the past also
needs to be stored. One module can be offered for many courses.

Each student enrolled with the department, is registered for one particular course. A module is
coordinated by a module leader who shares teaching duties with one or more lecturers. A lecturer
may teach (and be a module leader for) more than one module. Information kept for a lecturer is
lecturer ID, name, DOB, email, address (streetno, streetname and city).

The database should also contain some information about students including their student IDs,
names, addresses, degrees they read for, and their past performance (i.e. modules taken and
examination results).

Draw an ER Diagram for the above, add relationship cardinalities and identify the key
attributes for the entities.
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