Implementation of a Resource Center - Assignment Example

The conceptual model in Fig .1 and the logical model in Fig. 2 below present a background that helps to understand essential information, which involves a corporate social responsibility concerning a resource center. The information consists of the resource staff, Item, the community /borrower, books, and data DVDs

Fig. 1: A conceptual model for Icon Gallery Resource Center.

 Need analysis:

 To allow multiple copies of the same book or DVD, each media item will have a unique ID number. Community members/borrowers will provide their name, address, phone number, and date of birth when signing up for the resource center card. They will then be assigned a unique username and ID number, plus a temporary password that will have to be changed. Checkout operations will require a resource center card, as will request to put media on hold. Each card will have its fines in case of misuse which will be shown in the database after member entry into the resource center.

The resource center will have branches in various physical locations. Branches will be identified by name, and each branch will have a postal address and phone number associated with it,

             Function for customers:

• Entry
• Search for media based on :

                         -a type of (book or both)

                         -title

                         -author or director

                         -year

• Access their account information

-Card number(s)

-Files

-Media currently checked out

-Media on hold

• Put media on hold
• Pay fines for lost or late items
• Update personal information

-Phone no.

-Addresses

Functions for the resource center staff are the same as community members/ borrowers in addition to the following:

• Add community members/borrowers
• Add resource centers cards and assign them to members
• Check out books and DVDs
• Manage & transfer books & DVDs currently on hold.
• Handle returns
• Modify members fines
• Add books & DVDs to the database
• Remove media from the database
• Receive payments from community members and update the member's fines and
• View all members’ information except passwords.

The entity-relationship design:

It’s evident that the physical objects from the previous part (community members, resource center card, resource center staff, books & DVD, and resource center branches.) correspond to entities in the Entity-Relationship Model and the operations to be done on those entities (holds, check-outs, and other) correspond to relationships. Nonetheless, the design is aimed at minimization of redundancy and storage of the necessary information in a small space as possible. The design is as in Fig. 3 below.

Fig. 3: The entity-relationship diagram for the Icon gallery resource center.

The information concerning books as well as DVDs has been separated from the media entity, to allow the database to store multiple copies of the same item without redundancy. The status entity has also been separated from the media to save space. The hold relationship stores the entry’s place in line (donated by “queue”), and it can be used to create a waiting list of interested community members. The resource center staff entity is functionally an extension to members, so each staff also has a member associated with it. The staff will have access to the same features as members but they will also perform administrative functions such as checking media in and out and issuing members fines.

The special relationship if condensed from the above information produces thirteen tables, which combine some entities and attributes/relationships into common tables as shown in Table 1 below.