Creative Art Case Study
Creative Art is a design school that offers online web design courses for the general
public. Currently, artwork submitted by students must be emailed to the instructors
and evaluations are emailed back to the student. When the school first began
operation, there were only 2 instructors and approximately 24 students. However, in
the last couple of years, business has grown and there are now 11 instructors and 420
students.
With this increase in students, the email load has become overwhelming and a new
solution must be introduced. Creative Art would like a database system to provide an
online interface for both students and teachers to log into to add and view both
artwork and evaluations. In addition, they would like to make the artwork available
for public display to showcase their students' artwork and provide a marketplace for
its sale.
When an instructor is hired, information including name, address, gender, phone
number, identity card number, date of birth, expertise and email address is collected
and a unique staff number is assigned.
Students, upon registration, are required to include similar information.
The course overviews are available online and include the name of the course, any
prerequisites, a description of the course and its assignments, the time frame in
which it is offered and the name of the associated instructor.
Once registration is close, the instructor receives the list of students and begins email
correspondence. Course material is emailed to the students and lectures are
conducted by teleconference. All assignments are scanned (i.e. photographs,
drawings) and emailed or otherwise sent electronically (i.e. with the provision of a
url). Evaluations are returned to the students. The addition of the new student
gallery and market will require a release form from interested students for display
and/or sale purposes.
The database will create a centralized system for the instructors, students, artwork,
evaluations (for viewing by the instructors and the concerned student only), the
courses and the course material.

Data Requirements
Staff
Creative Art has 11 staff members, all of whom are instructors. Two of the staff
members are the founders of the school and, in addition to their occasional
instruction, they also provide administrative support. The data stored on each
member of staff includes staff number, name, identity card number, gender, phone
number, date of birth, address, email address, expertise and courses taught. The staff
number is uniquely assigned.
Students
Members of the public who register and pay for courses through the Creative Art
website are considered students. The data stored on each student includes student
number, name, identity card number, gender, phone number, date of birth, address,
email address, previous courses and experience. Also stored is the date of
registration and the courses registered in. The student number is uniquely assigned
to each student.
Courses
Creative Art offers a variety of online design courses. The data stored on each course
includes the course number, the name of the course, the course description and
prerequisites (if any). The course number is a unique number.
Class sections
Each course is made up of several class sections that determine the time and
duration of the class. The data stored on each section includes the section number,
the course number, the instructor's staff number, the assignments, the semester and
the year. The section number is uniquely assigned to each section.
Course Materials
The instructors maintain a variety of course materials for use with the courses. The
data stored on each of the course material documents include the document
identifier, the title of the document, the topic, the associated course(s), the author,
the date created and the date added. In addition, the electronic document itself will
be stored in the database. The document identifier is a unique number.
Artwork
All artwork that is submitted as a visual assignment for a course is included in the
database. The data stored on artwork includes the name of the artist, the format (i.e.
pdf, html, jpg), the date it was created and submitted, the medium used (i.e. b&w
photography, charcoal drawing), the subject matter and the associated course,
instructor and assignment. Each piece is assigned a unique code. Also stored is the
electronic version of the artwork itself and the use permissions provided by the
student.
Evaluations
Instructors are required to submit an evaluation for each assignment received. The
data stored on evaluations includes the name of the instructor, the date it was written,
the grade assigned, the written evaluation and the associated student, course and
assignment. The evaluation is associated with the same unique code attached to the
artwork.

Transaction Requirements
Data Entry
(a) Enter the details of a new instructor.
(b) Enter the details of a new student.
(c)
(d)
(e)
Data Update / Deletion
(a) Update / delete the details of an instructor.
(b) Update / delete the details of a student.
(c)
(d)
(e)
Data Queries
The database should be capable of supporting the following sample queries:
(a) List the classes assigned to a given instructor.
(b) Identify the total number of enrolled students.
(c)
(d)
(e)