Practice Database Design

Introduction

To practice modeling databases, you'll be tasked with drawing ERDs for a handful of hypothetical applications. Think about what models you would need and what tables you'd create, including the associated attributes and how they would related to other tables.

Break into pairs and work together to draw out diagrams for one of the apps below. You'll be drawing on the wall, so snap photos of the drawings when you've finished for safe keeping.

Afterwards, we'll ask for volunteers (or pick some participants) to walk us through your thinking & explain your decisions.

Remember to consider all different angles in each of these examples. What jobs relationships exist? What people are there? What objects and intangible ideas are necessary? How would you organize it?

Exercise

• Pick one or more of the following analyze what it primarily does & try to draw the tables & relationships. Don't try to model every single piece of data within the app. Start with the most important models and add on from there.

  • Facebook
  • 99.co
  • Github
  • Carousell
  • AirBnB
  • Medium

  Hint: If you're not sure how to make a given table or store a piece of data, write in, with dummy data, all the columns of a single record / row.

Deliverables

In Pairs:

1

An ERD diagram, using crow's foot notation, of whatever app you choose. For example:

Note: this example has "Items" as placeholders for the attributes.

Warning: DO NOT try to implement the entire app. That will be way too big. Start with the major features. Then move on to the next part (2). If you get done with the below, come back and add to the ERD.

2

Write the tables.sql file for this app.

In Pairs or On Your Own:

(If you found out you made a mistake in your table creation when you run your seed file, or when you are working on your own at all, make sure to coordinate with your partner to fix these errors.)

3

Write a seed.sql for the first row or two in every table.

4

Write the sql SELECT queries that gets every major relationship in the app in a queries.sql file. (Make sure you have enough dummy data to get at least one row.)

For example, for Facebook, write an sql SELECT to get:

• my friends on Facebook
• photos I'm tagged in
• every user in a Facebook group
• etc.

Additional Resources

• crows foot notation cheat sheet

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Licensing

1. All content is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
2. All software code is licensed under GNU GPLv3. For commercial use or alternative licensing, please contact [email protected].