Chapter 9 Review Question, Discussion Topic and Project
Review Question 1: In the auto shop examples on page 348, what are some problems that might arise in Mario's system? Why won't Danica run into the same problems? Provide specific examples in your answer.
Problems that would be exclusive to Mario’s Auto Shop are: increased time spent on entering in the same data, miscalculations could result from having two people entering in the same data and they would not be able to compare all of the data at once. Danica wouldn’t run into those problems because she only has one table and therefore doesn’t have to retype the same data into two different tables. Danica would also be able to compare all of her data on a single screen and would be able to organize the two categories at once. Having only one large table would also reduce time being spent on entering data as opposed to having two separate data tables.
Discussion Topic 1: Are there ethical issues to consider when planning a database? For example, should sensitive personal data (such as medical information) be stored in the same DBMS that manages employee salary and benefits data? Why or why not?
The main ethical issues of handling sensitive data would be privacy. Medical information should only be visible to doctors or health insurance providers. While employee salary and benefits should only be visible to management. Also all the data storage should comply with all laws of privacy including the HIPPA act and Constitutional rights to privacy.
Project 1: Search the Internet to find information about date formats. Determine whether the date format used in the United States is the most common format.
Europeans have the dd/mm/yyyy format for dates, while Chinese and scientific formatting is yyyy/mm/dd. The American format of mm/dd/yyyy is unique and only found in the United States. It is the least common because