COP-5725

PRACTICE EXERCISES
Chapter 2: Database Design
Chapter 3: Relational Model

M. Amanda Crick

Exercise 2.4
Problem
A company database needs to store
information about employees (identified
by ssn, with salary and phone as
attributes), departments (identified by
dno, with dname and budget as
attributes), and children of employees
(with name and age as attributes).

Exercise 2.4
Problem
Employees work in departments; each
department is managed by an employee;
a child must be identified uniquely by
name when the parent (who is an
employee; assume that only one parent
works for the company) is known. We are
not interested in information about a child
once the parent leaves the company.
Draw an ER diagram that captures this
information.

Exercise 2.4
Solution
First, we shall design the entities and
relationships.

Employees work in departments

each department is managed by an
employee
a child must be identified uniquely by
name when the parent (who is an
employee; assume that only one parent
works for the company) is known.

Exercise 2.4
Solution
salary
ssn

dnam
e
phone

Employees

Manages

Dependent

Works_In

Child
name

dno

age

budge
t
Departmen
ts

Exercise 2.4
Solution
Now, we will design the constraints.

each department is managed by an

employee
a child must be identified uniquely by
name when the parent (who is an
employee; assume that only one parent
works for the company) is known.
We are not interested in information about
a child once the parent leaves the
company.

Exercise 2.4
Solution
salary
ssn

dnam
e
phone

Employees

Manages

Dependent

Works_In

Child
name

dno

age

budge
t
Departmen
ts

Exercise 2.8
Problem
Although you always wanted to be an artist,
you ended up being an expert on databases
because you love to cook data and you
somehow confused database with data
baste. Your old love is still there, however,
so you set up a database company, ArtBase,
that builds a product for art galleries. The
core of this product is a database with a
schema that captures all the information
that galleries need to maintain.

Exercise 2.8
Problem
Galleries keep information about artists, their
names (which are unique), birthplaces, age,and
style of art. For each piece of artwork, the
artist, the year it was made, its unique title, its
type of art (e.g., painting, lithograph, sculpture,
photograph), and its price must be stored.
Pieces of artwork are also classified into groups
of various kinds, for example, portraits, still
lifes, works by Picasso, or works of the 19th
century; a given piece may belong to more
than one group.

Exercise 2.8
Problem
Each group is identified by a name (like
those just given) that describes the group.
Finally, galleries keep information about
customers. For each customer, galleries
keep that persons unique name, address,
total amount of dollars spent in the gallery
(very important!), and the artists and
groups of art that the customer tends to
like.
Draw the ER diagram for the database.

Exercise 2.8
Solution
Like before, we begin with the entities
and relationships.
artists, their names (which are
unique), birthplaces, age, and style of
art.
For each piece of artwork, the artist, the
year it was made, its unique title, its type
of art and its price must be stored.

Exercise 2.8
Solution
Pieces of artwork are also classified into
groups of various kinds, Each group is
identified by a name (like those just given)
that describes the group.
For each customer, galleries keep that
persons unique name, address, total
amount of dollars spent in the gallery
(very important!), and the artists and
groups of art that the customer tends to
like.

Exercise 2.8
Solution
type

year

name

title

Like_Group

Group

Classify

Artwork

Customer

Like_Artist

Artist

Paints

addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

name
birthplace

style
age

price

Exercise 2.8
Solution
Now we look at constraints.

Although not explicitly mentioned in the

problem, we assume that each piece of
artwork had to be painted by an artist.
We also assume that each piece of artwork
was created by exactly one artist.

Exercise 2.8
Solution
type

year

name

title

Like_Group

Group

Classify

Artwork

Customer

Like_Artist

Artist

Paints

addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

name
birthplace

style
age

price

Exercise 2.8
Solution
Suppose we had several piece of artwork
with the same title, and we told them
apart by artist?
Example: What is Love? by Cheryl D,
What is Love? by Joe Brown, etc.

Exercise 2.8
Solution
type

year

name

title

Like_Group

Group

Classify

Artwork

Customer

Like_Artist

Artist

Paints

addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

name
birthplace

style
age

price

Exercise 3.14
Problem
Consider the scenario from Exercise 2.4,
where you designed an ER diagram for a
company database. Write SQL
statements to create the corresponding
relations and capture as many of the
constraints as possible. If you cannot
capture some constraints, explain why.

Exercise 3.14
ER Diagram from Exercise 2.4dnam
salary
ssn

e
phone

Employees

Manages

Dependent

Works_In

Child
name

dno

age

budge
t
Departmen
ts

Exercise 3.14
Solution
First we begin with the entities
Employees and Departments.
Translating these to SQL is
straightforward.

Exercise 3.14
Solution
salary
ssn

phone

Employees

dnam
e
dno

budge
t
Departmen
ts

CREATE TABLE Employees(

ssn CHAR(10),
sal INTEGER,
phone CHAR(13),
PRIMARY KEY
(ssn) )

CREATE TABLE
Departments (
dno INTEGER,
budget INTEGER,
dname CHAR(20),
PRIMARY KEY (dno)
)

Exercise 3.14
Solution
Next, we translate the relationships,
Manages and Dependents.
We translate each these to a table
mapping one entity to another.
We also use foreign constraints to make
sure every row in the relationship tables
refers only to rows that exist in the entity
tables.

Exercise 3.14
Solution

salary

ssn
Employees

dnam
e
phone

dno
Manages

budge
t
Departmen
ts

Works_In

CREATE TABLE Works_in(

CREATE TABLE Manages (
ssn CHAR(10),
ssn CHAR(10),
dno INTEGER,
dno INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (ssn, dno),
PRIMARY KEY (dno),
FOREIGN KEY (ssn)
FOREIGN KEY (ssn)
REFERENCES Employees,
REFERENCES Employees,
FOREIGN KEY (dno)
FOREIGN KEY (dno)
REFERENCES Departments)
REFERENCES Departments)

Exercise 3.14
Solution
Why did we make dno the primary key
for Manages?
Since each department can have at most
one manager, each dno can appear at
most once in the Manages table, making
it a key for Manages.
Note that if we had made (ssn, dno) the
key for Manages, a department could
have more than one Manager.

Exercise 3.14
Solution
Finally, we translate the weak entity
Child and its corresponding relationship
Dependent

Exercise 3.14
Solution
salary
ssn

phone

Employees

CREATE TABLE Dependents(

ssn CHAR(10),
name CHAR(10),
age INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (ssn, name),
FOREIGN KEY (ssn)
REFERENCES
Employees,
ON DELETE CASCADE )

Dependent

Child
name

age

Exercise 3.18
Problem
Write SQL statements to create the
corresponding relations to the ER
diagram you designed for Exercise 2.8. If
your translation cannot capture any
constraints in the ER diagram, explain
why.

Exercise 3.18
ER Diagram from Exercise 2.8
type

year

name

title

Like_Group

Group

Classify

Artwork

Customer

Like_Artist

Artist

Paints

addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

name
birthplace

style
age

price

Exercise 3.18
Solution
The entities are translated similarly to
Exercise 3.4. Since these are fairly
simple, we shall skip them.
Now, we shall translate the relationships.

Exercise 3.18
Solution
name

Like_Group

Group

Customer
addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

CREATE TABLE Like Group (

name CHAR(20),
cust name CHAR(20),
PRIMARY KEY (name,
cust_name),
FOREIGN KEY (name)
REFERENCES Group,
FOREIGN KEY (cust name)
REFERENCES
Customer)

Exercise 3.18
Solution
Customer

Like_Artist
addre
ss

cust_i
d
name

amou
nt

Artist
name

style

birthplace

CREATE TABLE Like Artist (

name CHAR(20),
cust name CHAR(20),
PRIMARY KEY (name, cust name),
FOREIGN KEY (name) REFERENCES
Artist,
FOREIGN KEY (cust name) REFERENCES
Customer)

age

Exercise 3.18
Solution
type

year
title

Artwork

Artist
name
birthplace

Paints
style
age

price

CREATE TABLE Artwork

Paints(
title CHAR(20),
artist name
CHAR(20),
type CHAR(20),
price INTEGER,
year INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (title),
FOREIGN KEY (artist
name)
REFERENCES
Artist)

Exercise 3.18
Solution
name

Group

type

year
title

Classify

Artwork

CREATE TABLE Classify (

Paints
title CHAR(20),
name CHAR(20),
PRIMARY KEY (title, name),
FOREIGN KEY (title) REFERENCES
Artwork_Paints,
FOREIGN KEY (name) REFERENCES
Group )

price

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Answer each of the following questions
briefly. The questions are based on the
following relational schema:

Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age:

integer, salary: real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime:
integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget:
real, managerid: integer)

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary:
real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real,
managerid: integer
1.

Give an example of a foreign key

constraint that involves the Dept
relation. What are the options for
enforcing this constraint when a user
attempts to delete a Dept tuple?

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (1)
An example of a foreign constraint that
involves Dept is:
CREATE TABLE Works (
eid INTEGER NOT NULL ,
did INTEGER NOT NULL ,
pcttime INTEGER,
PRIMARY KEY (eid, did),
UNIQUE (eid),
FOREIGN KEY (did)
REFERENCES Dept )

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (1)
Furthermore, when a user attempts to
delete a tuple from Dept, we can

also delete all Works tuples that refer to it.

disallow the deletion of the Dept tuple if
some Works tuple refers to it.
for every Works tuple that refers to it, set
the did field to the did of some (existing)
default department.
for every Works tuple that refers to it, set
the did field to null.

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary:
real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real,
managerid: integer
2.

Write the SQL statements required to

create the preceding relations, including
appropriate versions of all primary and
foreign key integrity constraints.

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (2)
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary:
real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
CREATE TABLE Emp ( CREATE TABLE Works (
eid INTEGER,
eid INTEGER,
did INTEGER,
ename CHAR(10),
pcttime INTEGER,
age INTEGER,
salary REAL,
PRIMARY KEY (eid, did),
PRIMARY KEY
FOREIGN KEY (did)
(eid) )
REFERENCES Dept,
FOREIGN KEY (eid)
REFERENCES Emp,
ON DELETE CASCADE)

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (2)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real, managerid:
integer

CREATE TABLE Dept (

did INTEGER,
budget REAL,
managerid INTEGER ,
PRIMARY KEY (did),
FOREIGN KEY (managerid)
REFERENCES Emp,
ON DELETE SET NULL)

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary: real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real, managerid:
integer
3.

Define the Dept relation in SQL so that every

department is guaranteed to have a manager.

Example of a Solution for (3)

CREATE TABLE Dept (
did INTEGER,
budget REAL,
managerid INTEGER NOT NULL ,
PRIMARY KEY (did),
FOREIGN KEY (managerid) REFERENCES
Emp)

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary: real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real, managerid:
integer

Write an SQL statement to add John Doe as

an employee with eid = 101, age = 32 and
salary = 15, 000.
Solution for (4)

4.

INSERT
INTO Emp (eid, ename, age,
salary)
VALUES (101, John Doe, 32,
15000)

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary: real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real, managerid:
integer
5.

Write an SQL statement to give every

employee a 10 percent raise.

Solution for (5)

UPDATE Emp E
SET E.salary = E.salary *
1.10

Exercise 3.8
Problem
Emp(eid: integer, ename: string, age: integer, salary:
real)
Works(eid: integer, did: integer, pcttime: integer)
Dept(did: integer, dname: string, budget: real,
managerid: integer
6.

Write an Write an SQL statement to delete

the Toy department. Given the referential
integrity constraints you chose for this
schema, explain what happens when this
statement is executed.

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (6)
DELETE
FROM Dept D
WHERE D.dname =
Toy

These are the example integrity

constraints that affect Dept.
CREATE TABLE Works (

FOREIGN KEY (did) REFERENCES Dept,

)

Since the action to take on deletion was

not specified, the database takes no
action by default That is, it rejects the
deletion.

Exercise 3.8
Solution for (6)
What other actions can the system take
on deleting a Dept tuple? What are the
pros and cons of each action?

On delete set null

On delete set default
On delete cascade

This is the end of the lecture!

I hope you enjoyed it.