Database Schema for a Health Care Clinic - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The database schema for the database is as follows:
(Indicated in bold are the primary and secondary key attributes)
Health Care Center (name, address, location, phone, email)
Patients(First Name, Last Name, Surname, patient Number, DOB, address, phone, next of kin, next of kin contacts )
Appointments (patient number, appointment number, date, time)
Prescriptions (prescription ID, patient number, prescription, date, treatment ID)\
Treatment (patient number, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment ID, date, treatment, description)
Referrals (patient number, date, hospital, symptoms, ref ID, description)
Diseases (disease ID, date, number of occurrences, symptoms, description)
The diagram is indicated in the PowerPoint presentation.

Challenges
The greatest difficulty in developing the database schema was in the drawing of the ER diagrams. The tools required for this task were not readily available and those that were available required a great deal of their understanding to use. The diagram drawn does not indicate all the attributes related to a given relation schema. It also has a limitation while indicating the relationships among the data entities.
This diagram can be highly improved so that it illustrates clearly all the relationships. This can only be achieved through the use of the appropriate modeling and mapping tools (John W. Satzinger, 2008).
Data dictionary for the entity attributes
• Primary key- This is a unique element in each table that helps to safeguard against repeating similar entries in a database. Helps to reduce data redundancy in the database (Elmasri, 2008).
• Secondary Key- This is a primary key that has been defined in another table but is being used in another table. This helps to enforce referential integrity of the database in that an attribute defined in a table must exist and have value to be used in the second table. ...Download file to see next pages Read More