Question

Using the provided set of requirements below, generate a data model.

This database will support a variety of applications for a nationwide chain of car dealerships. Each dealership has a name and address, as well as a variety of staff members. All vehicles in inventory must be tracked in the database as well. For each vehicle, the database should track the year of the vehicle, the make, model, VIN, mileage, current list price, and the dealership where it is located. Each vehicle sale should be tracked as well. For each sale, the vehicle sold, the sale price, method of payment, and the employee who completed the sale should be recorded.

Your written assignment should answer the following questions:

• Are there any requirements missing that would have been helpful?
• Are there any reasonable alternative models for this set of requirements?
• What was the most difficult part of this task and why?

Answer 1

Data model for the requirements given in the question above is below :-

1) Are there any requirements missing that would have been helpful?

1) Yes there are requirements missing that can be helpful :-

There should be an employee table with the columns Employee_ID , Employee_name , Employee_contact , Employee_address , Employee_Vehicle_sale

It becomes easy to keep a track of how many vehicles sold by which employee which helps further to give annual feedback and compensations to the employees.

2) Are there any reasonable alternative models for this set of requirements?

2) Yes there can be other models which can be used :-

a) Relational model :- In relational model the tables are linked in a better way with each other by showing the relations between or among the different tables . all the foreign keys are pointed out . this makes the database more flexible and adaptable .

b) Object_oriented mdel :- It defines the database as the collection of different objects with their respective features and methods .

c) E-R model :- In this different entities i.e. tables are being linked with each other via logical relations just like in the real world . It gives a better conceptual outlook towards the database designing.

3) What was the most difficult part of this task and why ?

3) The most difficult part was that ,as the employee details are missing so it was difficult to form a relation with the employee who sold the vehicle column with the sales table . It came out as a random column with no connection to the actual employee details.

2)