Ryan Thompson
Milestone Three: Birchwood Lane Schools DBMS Proposal
Southern New Hampshire University
IT 204: Introduction to Data and Information Management
Professor Venkat Lellapalli
24 November 2019
Running head: MILESTONE THREE: PROPOSAL DRAFT
In order to meet both state and federal requirements for schools appropriately, Birchwood
Lane Schools is in need of assistance. An application system which records all data for students,
courses, and instructors electronically, meets current requirements at both federal and state levels
is recommended. Research has shown that this task can best be accomplished through the use of
a comprehensive database management system (DBMS). This will help to ensure that all
necessary data is included.
Birchwood Lane School Administrators have indicated through our interactions what
current data needs must be included. According to the administrator, student information
required in our DBMS should include full name, address, phone number, email, date of birth,
date of enrollment, date courses were taken, as well as courses currently being taken and
graduation date. This information will be known as the student entity. Each component of the
information included above comprise the student's entity and attributes. The entity required for
instructors requires these attributes: full name, address, email, phone, date of birth, courses
taught currently, assigned courses, as well as date of hire. The third component of the ERD
(entity relationship diagram) is the course data entity: course name, start date of course, course
end date, category of course, instructor, and students. In order to access transcripts of students,
and in scheduling, this information must be included in all records and used to properly maintain
open communication between the entities and DBMS.
So, there is no need to provide any further system alterations, it could be beneficial to
include the following additional attributes. These could be GPA for students, clubs/sports
involved in, courses needed in the development of a comprehensive learning program.
Running head: MILESTONE THREE: PROPOSAL DRAFT
An integrated component of the viability of the DBMS system is knowing who the
system will be used for. For the Birchwood Lane Schools System, the premise and assumption
made is that the primary users of the system will be security, teachers, and front
office/administration employees. As Birchwood Lane School is currently using only paper
efficiency, save money and resources in the long run, and decrease the need to print, record, or
shred documents.
Use of the DBMS model in addition to bringing record-keeping up to state and federal
guidelines will also have the capacity to edit information without having to return to square one
Regarding the implementation all staff would need to be trained in the appropriate use of the
DBMS. I would recommend that summer or staff development time would be appropriate to roll
out the DBMS and work with staff on implementation and understanding of the model.
Budget permitting, I would recommend use of Microsoft SQL, Oracle, or MySQL.
Fig. 1: Relational Database Model
StudentID (TX) FullName FullAddress Phone Email DateofBirth EnrollmentDate CourseTakenDate CurrentCourses GPA
CourseName (TN) StartDate EndDate Category Instructo