Ch5 Homework
Bart Simpson has come to you to help him organize his lawn
cutting business. Skateboards and slingshots are not cheap, so
Bart had to grow his business to afford his hobbies. However,
Bart is losing track of jobs and is asking you to help him get
organized.
1) (4pts) He was thinking about either using a spreadsheet or a database to
manage customers and asked you to explain the difference. You remembered
that section Q1 in the text book discussed this (Experiencing MIS, pg 125-26)
as well as the powerpoint slides. Provide pros and cons of using a database vs a
spreadsheet (25+ words)
2) After answering (1) above, you decide that a database would be better in the
long run. You decide that Bart will need two tables. USE EXCEL OR WORD or
EQUIVLENTS to create the tables, NOT ACCESS. We will get to Access is an
few weeks. (Experiencing MIS, pg 127-29).
a. (5pts) Table 1 will be a customer table and should have fields (columns)
that describe information you would want to know about a customer. This
includes where the customer lives and how you will contact them –
include at least 3 fields. Select or create one field to be the primary key
(this column should the left most column with yellow fill). HINT – Are
any of these fields unique? What do you use as a username for many
websites and apps? For most, this probably has gmail.com in it
Enter at least three records (rows) of customer information.
b. (5pts) Table 2 will be a jobs table and should have fields (columns) that
describe information you would want to know about a job. Some ideas
here are type, date, time, cost,…. Have at least 5 fields, this includes
the foreign key from step c below. Since there is nothing unique in this
table, you will need to create a field called JobID that will be your primary
key for this table and can be a number. For example 1,2,3 for the first
three records. This column should be yellow fill. Enter at least four
records (rows) of job information.
c. (3pts) The magic of a relational database is the relationships between the
tables. Since there is a one to many relationship between customers and
jobs (i.e., one customer can have many jobs, but a specific job can only
have one customer), you will need to put a copy of the applicable
customer primary key in each row of the jobs table as a foreign key since
jobs is the “many” table. This will relate the records together. The
foreign key column should be the right most column with light blue
fill.
CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE
Ch5 Homework
3) (3pts) Bart was doing research on DBMS and discovered that there are two
major types of DBMS – personal and enterprise.
a. Assuming that Bart and maybe Millhouse will be the only two persons on
the DBMS at any given time, would you recommend a personal or
enterprise DBMS and explain why. (25+ words)
b. If personal, provide a specific recommended product.
