Assignment+3+Clarifications

**Assignment #3: Clarifications **
Assignment #3

Please post questions here that you have for the sponsors of the Karwa IS project that you need to complete for assignment #3. The project sponsor will try to respond quickly and thoughtfully, but understand he is busy keeping the taxis running, customers happy, cars in working condition, and the dispatchers working efficiently, so sometimes it might take a little while to respond to you. One implication of this possible delay is that you should start working on the project earlier rather than later, as there may not be time to get answers to your questions at the last minute.

Please be sure to put your name next to the questions that you post

Answered Questions:
Q. In terms of what we need to deliver, other than the optional writeup about assumptions made, do we also need to include a description of the entities, attributes and relations? Do we need to describe how and why different entities are related, or should we just deliver an ERD model?

//A. You should deliver what is describes in the 'deliverables' section of the assignment writeup. To clarify, you do not need to provide an explanation of your entities, attributes, or relations beyond what is specified in your ERD. If you find that it is helpful to do so, you are welcome to add commentary or an explanation of the assumptions you have made in designing your ERD as an appendix. If done well, the ERD should be sufficient to explain your design on its own. That is one of the elegant features of ER Modeling - a skilled ER modeler can look at a well-done ERD and know precisely how to implement a database to store and support that ER model.//

Q: Do we have to produce one big E-R model, do all the entities have to be connected together? Or should we create separate entities for each function?

//A. Your primary deliverable is a single E-R Diagram that captures all of the data requirements from the specification given in assignment 3. You may have entities on the ERD that are not connected (most complex ERD's do have some entities that stand on their own with no relations). Likewise, if you need to use more than one page for your ER Diagram that is ok as well. As a hint, though, if you find you need more than a single page of A3 paper, you probably have too many entities in your model. It is sometimes useful to create small ER Diagrams for individual functions as you are figuring out how to model a system, but the final ERD should merge together all of those smaller models into a single, consistent diagram.//