Elizabeth Washburn : Database Design Report

Home

The assignment was to design a database to house records of required course work for LSC 508 (annotations for supplemental reading). Requirements for the database:

flexibility: data may be used in a number of ways
ease of data entry
search and retrieval options allow for several diferent types of reports

Potential uses for the database for the professor as end user could include:

as a check to make sure all the assignments required were handed in
to see how often data was accessed online vs from print source
as a way to check to see how often a particular article was annotated, and perhaps add it to the required reading list if it seemed particularly useful.

The software chosen for the project was Microsoft Access 2003; the program was included as part of the standard software package on computers installed in my local library as part of the Gates Foundation Library Computer Grant. Since it was readily available to me at work, it seemed to make sense to learn how to use it. It soon became apparent that its advantages include:

it is a powerful, but user-friendly tool
it could be used for a simple database even by a novice user
it has the potential to do far more complex work as the user gained proficiency or as the project required it.
could conceivably allow modification to the database tables that would provide a very flexible means of looking up any field required for any number of reports
allows for such reports to be customized a great deal
the designer of the report can designate up to four criteria for the sorting of data per report.
provides the beginning user with guidance in setting up forms for data entry while allowing the more advanced user to design forms easily
allows the user to create a checkbox for fields with limited choices
It allows the user to set rules for determining what is valid data for a field, such as semester and year the course was taken
It even provides its own security in the form of a password function

Over the course of the next five years, the database will increase dramatically from the size required for the first class, summer of 05, especially as the summer class is required to hand in only ten annotations. The software is more than capable of handling this relatively small database. The computer it will be run on has a 20g hard drive and 512Mb RAM, and should be able to run the program with this database even though the Access program can require up to 1 G to run on its own.

The original form for the data was the annotation itself in APA format, with no italics:

Assignment 1

Norton, M. J. (1999). Knowledge discovery in databases [Electronic Version]. Library Trends, 48 (1), 9-22.

Defines the basics of what a contemporary database is and how it is constructed vs. design of databases intended for knowledge discovery instead of data warehousing. Lists and discusses benefits and requirements for Knowledge Discovery Databases, and how they might be used in the future.

A form was designed for data input, with the addition of a field for the annotator's name and the assignment number.

data entry form

At this point, there was the option of creating a number of data tables of varying complexity in their interrelationships, but for this assignment, only four tables were used. Screen design of the new input form is available in the print supplement, as is a copy of the data field definitions and field sizes.

Security could be handled by the password-protection function, and by keeping the database in a locked office and desk, saved on r/w DVD, if a DVD burner is available. At approximately 750 Mb of data, not including the database structure (field descriptions, validation rules, data tables and their linkages) it is too large to be kept on a single CD, and breaking the database into sections would reduce its usefulness.

Printouts included in the printed supplement will show the results of using this database with a limited number of entries to produce a report that indicates number of articles accessed online compared to items accessed in print, and one run to indicate which articles were annotated by a particular student. Printing was fast and efficient; the program allows for some attractive color choice customization and format layouts.

Home