Assessment: Modelling

Task - Overview of business case:

Drive2Impress is a small business that sells cars in Canberra. Drive2Impress can obtain cars from several different suppliers. Drive2Impress keeps its cars in several showrooms across the city. At this stage customers cannot view the available cars online so to order they must visit one of the showrooms. Customers call Drive2Impress to arrange a visit before they go to a showroom. Drive2Impress has been using an Excel spreadsheet to track their business activities; however, this has caused many redundancies and inefficiency.

With view to their expanding business and under the new management, they decided to investigate the option of implementing a database system. Accordingly, they hired you to design a relational database to better track and record their operational data.

NOTE: The overview of business case is included here to provide context only. For the purpose of identifying entities, attributes and relationships between entities please read Drive2Impress business rules and instructions for creating your ERD below.

Drive2Impress business rules and instructions for creating your ERD:

1. Each supplier supplies one or more different types of cars. Each car type is supplied by only one supplier. Every supplier is identified by a supplier code. The company name, street, city, state, postcode, phone number, and account number are also kept in the system for every supplier. For car type, the type name (i.e. Sedan, SUV, ute, etc.) and market segment (i.e. small family, large family, etc.) are kept in the system.

Create an ERD that represents the entities, attributes, the relationships between entities, and the cardinality and optionality of each relationship that are described by this business rule.

2. Each car type has one or more models. Each model is supplied as part of a car type. For each model, the model name, engine capacity, seating capacity, year manufactured, and Drive2Impress retail price must be kept in the system.

Add the entities, attributes, the relationships between entities, and the cardinality and optionality of each relationship that are described by this business rule to the same ERD that you created for business rule 1.

3. Each car type is kept in more than one showroom. Each showroom keeps one or more car types. Each showroom is identified by a showroom ID. For each showroom address, postcode, phone number are kept in the system.

Add the entities, attributes, the relationships between entities, and the cardinality and optionality of each relationship that are described by this business rule to the same ERD that you created for business rule 1 and business rule 2.

4. Each customer can visit one or more showrooms. Each showroom can be visited by more than one customer. Each customer is identified by a customer code. For each customer the name, mobile phone, address and the expected date and time of arrival are kept in the system.

Add the entities, attributes, the relationships between entities, and the cardinality and optionality of each relationship that are described by this business rule to the same ERD that you created for business rule 1, business rule 2 and business rule 3.  

Rationale

This assessment aligns with the following subject outcomes: be able to gather, analyse and model business requirements using Enhanced Entity Relationship Diagrams (EERD);