Part A Project Brief: SoundStuff

Specialized UK Audio Equipment Hire Company

Part A Project Brief: SoundStuff

SoundStuff is a UK company that is specialised in hiring out audio equipment to recording artists to be used for the recording, mixing and mastering of audio projects, such as music tracks and albums. The company runs a number of recording studios located all over the UK. SoundStuff offers a really wide range of studio equipment to their customers such as analogue and digital recorders, mixing desks, audio interfaces, microphones, studio monitors, digital converters, controllers and other studio accessories. Some of these equipment items are fixed and can only be used in the SoundStuff studios under the supervision of an engineer. Other equipment items are portable and can be lent out to customers to be used in their home studios and can be delivered by a SoundStuff driver.

Conceptual ERD for SoundStuff

Part B Questions

Prefix the names of all tables and attributes with your id number starting with w.

You have been hired by SoundStuff as a database consultant to undertake a database project to support the data needs of the firm. In this second part, you are given a conceptual data model for SoundStuff (figure 1), and your first goal is to map it onto a high-quality LOGICAL  (ERD) to logically represent how the key business data needs can be organised as a set of interrelated tables that can then be implemented. These tables need to be interconnected according to the strict rules of the relational model to be implementable. You also have to write a key SQL query to retrieve specific data. Finally, you need to present a brief comparative analysis of relational databases vs. NoSQL databases with the aim to provide SoundStuff with informed guidance on the best option for them to select.

5) Map the Conceptual ERD given on figure 1 to produce a complete LOGICAL ERD for SoundStuff. This LOGICAL ERD needs to include all the correct tables, relationships, multiplicity constraints, attributes, primary keys and foreign keys. It should be easy to read and needs to fit on one page of the report.

6) Write an SQL query to retrieve a list of studio names for those studios that have an address in London, along with the makes, series, and models of the items of equipment in these studios, but only for the equipment that cost more than £125 a day to hire.

7) Create a comparative analysis table to compare and contrast Relational Databases vs. NoSQL databases with a view to inform the decision-making of the management of a firm. Your table should present clear comparison criteria (or informative decision factors) as rows and have a column for Relational Databases and a column for NoSQL databases so that you can compare them side by side. You could consider areas such as schemas, data consistency, storage, performance, workload, infrastructures, security, etc.

Will be marked based on the following marking criteria:

Marking Criteria Marks

Clarity, formatting, and structure of the logical ERD with correct UML notations 10

Correct mapping of specialisations 10

Correct mapping of ternary relationships 10

Correct mapping of binary relationships 05

Correctness of the SQL Query 05

Relevance of comparison criteria and decision factors used to compare 2 database paradigms

Key Requirements

• Only UML notations are accepted, as introduced in this module.
• You need to prefix all your entities and attributes with “w + the 7 digits of your ID number” as provided by the University.

For example, if my name is Francois Roubert and my ID number is w1234567, when I identify the entity “Module” and its attributes “moduleCode”, “moduleName” and “moduleType”, I will have to represent it this way: