LIS 7008 - Information Technologies
Spring 2014 - Section 01
Assignment 5


This homework is due on your course Web site before the beginning of next class session. Partial credit may be awarded. Please do NOT email me any database file as an attachment because database files are really big (in megabytes) and can congest my inbox very quickly, and the LSU email system treats any database file as a virus, and so does not allow downloading. Thanks!

Note: This should be done using Microsoft Access for Windows, version 2000-2003, 2007, or 2010. Microsoft Office products are available from Tigerware through PAWS. If you do not have Microsoft Office, you can download and install OpenOffice from www.openoffice.org. OpenOffice (and MS products, PHP/MySQL/Perl) tutorials are available at inpics.net. Mac computer users should either use OpenOffice or find a Windows computer.

Create a database for an elementary school library which contains at least the following information:

You must use at least two tables (you may use more if necessary) when designing your database. You may find that you need to include more information in the database than is requested here in order to construct the required queries. Your database should be able to handle any number of students, any number of books, and any number of books charged out to a single student.

Enter the appropriate information for at least 10 students and 10 books into the database and arrange it so that exactly 5 of the books are charged out, 3 of them to the same student. At least two of your books must have the same title (but be different books), and at least two of your students must have the same name (yes, same first name, middle name, and last name! but, of course, be different students!).

Construct two queries. The first should show the title of each book that is charged out, the name of the student to whom it is charged out, and the due date. The second query should simply show the name of each student at the school. Please do NOT retrieve more information (i.e., fields) than specified in the queries.

Many of the things you will need to decide when designing your database have not been specified in this assignment. For example, the form of a student's name (e.g., first and last, nickname, middle initial, etc.) has not been specified. Nor has the maximum length of a book's title. You may make any reasonable decisions about things which are not specified in this assignment.

Please name your database file as LastName_FirstName_HW5, then post your database (i.e., the tables and two queries in one database file) on your homework Web page (7008.html) by making a link from "Homework 5" to your database file, before class on the date that this assignment is due. Please make a note on your Web page which software - Microsoft Access 2000-2003, Microsoft Access 2007, OpenOffice, etc. - you use to create the database.

The basic steps for using Microsoft Access are addressed in the slides for this class. Regardless of the specific software you use to create a database, the basic steps are generally the same: create a database, create tables, define fields, create records by inputing data, create relationships, then create queries and run the queries. There are a lot of tutorials for Microsoft Access and OpenOffice on the Internet. See the syllabus page for some of the tutorials. I have not looked at any tutorials for OpenOffice yet, but you can find them for yourself.

FAQ:

Grading rubric:


Acknowledgement to Doug Oard, revised by Yejun Wu.