Relational Database Course Requirements

This course can be taken on Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms.

This course does not require any specific software. In order to read the case study on which the course project is based,
you will now want to obtain a word-processing application such as Microsoft Word.

1. The case study on which the course project is based. This outlines the characteristics and data-retrieval needs of Stories on CD, Inc., a fictional mail-order company selling books on CD.
2. A copy of the database design diagram that represents the culmination of the course project.
3. A table comparing database terminology and the different phases of the design and creation process in which equivalent terms are used.

Click the link to your left to download the case study.

The following book can be purchased from the book store.
Relational Database Design
The next lesson discusses the learning resources available through this website.

Logical database schema design is concerned with organizing data into a logical form acceptable to the underlying database system. One of the logical structures is relational structure which we use to develop logical schema (Conceptual schema). It is a complicated process. Some of the important points which make it complicated are:

1. The designer is constrained by the limited data structure types supported by the data base system.
2. The database designer may have to consider the access path of the records.
3. The database designer may have to consider how to make database access and modification efficient.
4. The designer has to identify and select a set of most relevant attributes for an entity.
5. The designer has to identify the size of a relation and connect two or more relations for navigation.

A good relational database is a set with a proper relational schema. A proper relational schema contains a set of relevant attributes of the entity it represents where every attribute is clearly related (directly or indirectly) to other attributes of the relation. A good relation should require minimum storage space and have minimum data redundancy.