Geog 495: GIS Database Design
10/12/05
Project Suggestions
These suggestions are intended to help give you ideas for how to get started with your project proposal. These suggestions do not themselves meet the proposal requirements given in the project handout! You are expected to modify and customize from here to result in a project proposal that does meet those requirements.
The first suggestion is to select/devise a scenario of interest to you. If you have particular expertise with your chosen scenario, so much the better. Keep in mind that you need five entities and four relationships for your database at the minimum. Among five entities, two entities should be “spatial”. In other words, at least two entities should be geoereferenced, thus such attributes (or field) as address, lon/lat, country and zipcode are necessary in your table. It does not necessarily mean that your scenario should place geographic questions in the center of questions.
When it comes to ambitious project (some projects seem like a good topic for GIS analysis course or master’s thesis, but not a good project for GIS database design course), please be reminded what we are learning from this course. We attempt to learn how to design GIS database with design tools keeping database concepts in mind. What we are trying to do in this course is to transform your database development skills to database design skills. Don’t forget the focus of this course. The aim of this project is that you demonstrate to me that you are capable of modeling reality into conceptual models (either relational or object-oriented), and making them implementable through query (to do this, any anomalies should be identified and eliminated through logical design). Therefore, try to keep the scope of your project down to the prototype level (in other word, feasible level). Being involved in prototype project may require you to be (in your mind) an imaginary person such as workers in the library, and so on.
Remember that proposal include the following five subsections. Examples below will be listed in such orders as marked with initial alphabet.
(1) Scenario: background of the project (write two full paragraphs)
(2) Problems: major problems that the users in the given scenario would like to solve (write at least one separate, full paragraph)
(3) Questions: include a list of specific examples of at least five significantly-different questions that the users of your proposed system would like to be able to have answered using your completed database (write in the form of a numbered or bulleted list)
(4) Reports: include a list of specific examples of at least one map and at least one report that the users of your proposed system would be able to generate using your completed database (write in the form of a numbered or bulleted list)
(5) Feasibility: do you think your proposal is doable? Why or why not? What possible problems do you foresee? Specify any assumptions you need to make (if appropriate).
Here are some “classical” categories for database project scenarios --- you are not limited to these, by any means.
Hobby-related
S. You have a lending library of comic books, cd’s, science fiction books. etc.
P. You are having trouble keeping track of who is borrowing what, or what copies of what work you have in what condition; you would like to be able to organize items in a variety of ways, perhaps on a whim (perhaps the place of publication?).
Q. Who is currently borrowing work X? Where does the customer live? Which works by Y do I have? Are they any works by directors who live outside of US? How many of them if any?
R. A report listing what each person has borrowed, in alphabetical order by person; A map showing the country where a specific genre of film is made (say horror movie).
Sports-related
S. You are interested in finding out details of a sports league in an organized way
P. Keeping track of players, various player or team statistics, which team is playing where when.
Q. For what team does player X play? Which team (based in where) has the top score?
R. A report showing the top player in a particular statistic from each team, ordered from best in that statistic on down; A map showing the location of university which won more than three times since some point in time.
Store-related
S. a clothing store, a food store
P. Keeping track of inventory, of employee hours, of customer special orders, etc.
Q. How many of item X do we currently have in stock? Where are stores that hold a given time?
R. A listing of the current inventory, organized by category, in reverse order of quantity or each item. A map showing the location of stores which has specific stocks.
Lesson/course-related
S. The activities of an organization offering courses
P. Keeping track of which lessons/course still have openings, or what the prerequisites are for a particular course
Q. Are there still any openings in the coming semester’s Tuesday section? Where is the course held?
R. List the courses in alphabetical order. A map showing the location of room where a specific course is offered
Hiking
S. You are the chief of hiking club
P. Keeping track of details of each hiking
Q.
Where did we go hiking last month? When did we go hiking to
R. List hiking sites in alphabetical order, or organized by proximity to city. A map showing hiking trails that are recommendable (you should record rating degrees)
Geography of great geographers
S. want to know where great geographers come from
P. Keeping track of time geography of great geographers
Q. Where did great geographers do their PhD? What was the most frequent dissertation topic area in year 1960?
R. List geographers in chronological order (say when PhD is completed). A map showing space-time trajectory of geographer A
Favorite places in
S. want to open website that shows
favorite place in
P. Keeping track of characteristics of
different place you went in
Q. Where is the library in
R. Map of parks rated (graduated color/symbol map) on the basis of accessibility (you can just input any value)
Debt record by state
S. want to know details of debt record by state, any geographic pattern of state with high debt? Want to know any possible correlation with other themes
P. keeping track of debt records from different perspectives (state, age, unemployment rate).
Q. which State has the highest debt at year 2004?
R. Map of states with debt over some amount outside of New England