Location: [CPSC 333] [Assignments] Assignment #1
This page was most recently modified on February 4, 1997.
This assignment is to be prepared and submitted by groups of at most three students - preferably, who are all in the same lab section. Each group of students should submit one copy of their solution.
The assignment is due at 4pm on Monday, February 10. It should be handed in using the drop box on the second floor of the Mathematical Sciences building.
Produce an entity-relationship diagram for the following system. In addition, list the attributes and the primary key for each entity, weak entity, and associative object, as well as the type of each relationship (and associative object) on your diagram. Finally, give a brief description of a set of operations that a ``data management subsystem'' might provide for the rest of this system.
To ask questions about this system (that is, to obtain details about it that aren't included below), please send email to the course instructor. Please do not ask the teaching assistants instead - they have been asked not to answer questions about this system, in order to reduce the probability that contradictory information will be given out. Note, by the way, that the problem description given here is intentionally incomplete, so that some additional information will be needed in order for this assignment to be completed.
Answers for reasonable questions will be posted to the course newsgroup and will also be made available, below.
You are to model a ``Cartography System;'' a problem description for this is as follows.
The system will be used to maintain information about a set of maps of (parts of) the world. Each map has a unique map number. The part of the world that is displayed by a map is given by the easternmost and westernmost longitudes, and the northernmost and southernmost latitudes, that are displayed.
The system also maintains a small amount of information about countries and cities of the world. In particular, the (unique) name, total population, and total area of each country is maintained, as is the name of its capital city. The name, latitude, and longitude of each city are maintained by the system. No two cities in the same country have the same name.
Finally, the system can be used to determine which maps show any given city, and to determine where a city is shown on a given map, if that city is shown on it. One can also determine which maps display (at least a part of) any given country.
Give a complete data dictionary for the entity-relationship diagram you obtained in your answer for question 1. Of course, this data dictionary should be consistent with all the information included in your answer for the first question.