Garden Glory wants to expand its database applications beyond the recording of property services. The company still wants to maintain data on owners, properties, employees, and services, but it wants to include other data as well. Specifically, Garden Glory wants to track equipment, how it is used during services, and equipment repairs. In addition, employees need to be trained before using certain equipment, and management wants to be able to determine who has obtained training on which equipment. With regard to properties, Garden Glory has determined that most of the properties it services are too large and complex to be described in one record. The company wants the database to allow for many subproperty descriptions of a property. Thus, a particular property might have subproperty descriptions of Front Garden, Back Garden, Second-Level Courtyard, and so on. For better accounting to the customers, services are to be related to the subproperties rather than to the overall property.
D2: DB Modeling & Design: You have gained a clear idea about the Garden Glory business and data requirements by conducting an initial analysis and query. Now analyze the business needs thoroughly and create a conceptual Entity Relationship (E-R) model for Garden Glory to represent the entities and relationships involved. Document the entity list, business rules and other processing results as appropriate. You can also refer to project questions in $4 of the Textbook.
1. Develop the E-R data model (in Visio) to meet Garden Glory's new requirements. Use the IE Crow's Foot E-R model for your E-R diagrams. Specify appropriate identifiers and attributes for each entity. Justify the decisions you make regarding minimum and maximum cardinality.
2. In a separate Word document, describe how you would go about validating the model developed. Document all relevant assumptions and business rules carefully.
Note: Use the following Figure D2 as a guide to document the relationship properties (e.g., Type: Strong, ID- or Non-ID-dependent; MAX: 1:1, 1:N, or N:M; MIN: Mandatory-Optional, O-O, or M-M) in the E-R models you developed for question 1 and 2. see image.