Optimization Strategies

Now that youve seen both the logical and physical side of databases, lets consider how to design a database to fulfill our business needs. Imagine you are tasked with designing a database that encompasses the online school website that you use on a daily basis.

The following requirements hold: Typical online student enrollment is 3,000 annually

Access is password protected

There should be a feature to create new accounts with different roles A role (faculty, student, staff) may have access to only certain features

Students can be enrolled in multiple courses

Faculty can teach multiple courses/sections

Student records must be kept indefinitely

Users should have near 24/7 access (with one hour of downtime allotted per month)

The most frequent operations from a student perspective are posting discussions, taking exams, uploading assignments, checking grades, and emails

The most frequent operations for faculty are posting discussions, changing course content, grading, and emails

The most frequent operations for staff are to enroll students, create new sections, and assign sections to faculty

What would be your initial design? Provide both a logical and physical approach. For your logical suggestion, provide an E-R model of how the system might look and then provide support that it will be efficient given the operations. For the physical design, provide an outline of strategies and infrastructure you would put into place to support the business requirements.