I have a bit of question. I'm currently being tasked to create a budget tracking database for the IT department using Microsoft Access. So below is the data about the IT department's budget in 2017. There are 14 IT departments in the company and they are categorized as KSIT, OPDR, PIIT and etc. The budget they spend on every year is listed on the left-hand side, which are perkakasan, perisian, projek baru and so on.
EXCEL spreadsheet
So now, my boss would like it if the interface would be something like each department may input the amount they've spent on each category; either perkakasan (hardware), perisian (software), projek baru (new project) and etc. There will be a login page too so there will be an admin ID, password, and the department they're from.
So now, the problem lies in the tables I have to construct. In my mind, I had come up with something like this: there would be 4 tables; table_dept, table_type, table_budget, and table_admin. Now for table_admin, I have no problem constructing them and assigning the PK. The problem is with the other tables. Is it possible that there will be only one entity in table_dept, which is dept_type or something like that. And the values from the dept_type will be the 14 departments, so it will be like a drop-down menu to ease the user inputting the data.
This sounds like a very basic question and I am a noob, I know. Your help will be very much appreciated!
Related
We presently use a pen/paper based roster to manage table games staff at the casino. Each row is an employee, each column is a 20 minute block of time and each cell represents what table the employee is assigned to, or alternatively they've been assigned to a break. The start and end time of shifts for employees vary as do the games/skills they can deal. We need to keep a copy of the rosters for 7 years, with paper this is fairly easy, I'm wanting to develop a digital application and am having difficulty how to store the data in a database for archiving.
I'm fairly new to working with databases, I think I understand how to model the data for a graph database like neo4j, but I had difficulty when it came to working with time. I've tried to learn about RDBMS databases like MySQL, below is how I think the data should be modelled. Please point out if I'm going in the wrong direction or if a different database type would be more appropriate, it would be greatly appreciated!
Basic Data
Here is some basic data to work with before we factor in scheduling/time.
Employee
- ID Number
- Name
- Skills (Blackjack, Baccarat, Roulette, etc)
Table
- ID Number
- Skill/Type (Can only be one skill)
It may be better to store the roster data as a file like JSON instead? Time sensitive data wouldn't be so much of a problem then. The benefit of going digital with a database would be queries, these could help assist time consuming tasks where human error is common.
Possible Queries
Note: Staff that are on shift are either on a break or on the floor (assigned to a table), Skills have a major or minor type based on difficulty to learn.
What staff have been on the floor for 80 minutes or more? (They are due for a break)
What open tables can I assign this employee to based on their skillset?
I need an employee that has Baccarat skill but is not already been assigned to a Baccarat table.
What employee(s) was on this table during this period of time?
Where was this employee at this point in time?
Who is on shift right now?
How many staff on shift can deal Blackjack?
How many staff have 3 major skills?
What staff have had the Baccarat skill for at least 3 months?
These queries could also be sorted by alphabetical order or time, skill etc.
I'm pretty sure I know how to perform these queries with cypher for neo4j provided I model the data right. I'm not as knowledgeable with SQL queries, I've read it can get a bit complicated depending on the query and structure.
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MYSQL Specific
An employee table could contain properties such as their ID number and Name, but am I right that for their skills and shifts these would be separate tables that reference the employee by a unique integer(I think this is called a foreign key?).
Another table could store the gaming Tables, these would have their own ID and reference a skill/gametype with a foreign key.
To record data like the pen/paper roster, each day could have a table with columns starting from 0000 increasing by 20 in value going all the way to 2340? Prior to the time columns I could have one for staff where each employee is represented with their foreign key, the time columns would then have foreign keys to the assigned gaming Tables, the row data is bound to have many cells that aren't populated since the employee shift won't be 24/7. If I'm using foreign keys to reference gaming Tables I now have a problem when the employee is on break? Unless I treat say the first gaming Table entry as a break?
I may need to further complicate things though, management will over time try different gaming Table layouts, some of the gaming Tables can be converted from say Blackjack to Baccarat. this is bound to happen quite a bit over 7 years, would I want to be creating new gaming Table entries or add a column to use a foreign key and refer to a new table that stores the history of game types during periods of time? Employees will also learn to deal new games during their career, very rarely they may also have the skill removed.
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Neo4j Specific
With this data would I have an Employee and a Table node that have "isA" relationship edges mapping to actual employees or tables?
I imagine with the skills for the two types I would be best with a Skill node and establish relationships like so?: Blackjack->isA->Skill, Employee->hasSkill->Blackjack, Table->typeIs->Blackjack?
TIME
I find difficulty when I want this database to now work with a timeline. I've come across the following suggestions for connecting nodes with time:
Unix Epoch seems to be a common recommendation?
Connecting nodes to a year/month/day graph?
Lucene timeline? (I don't know much about this or how to work with it, have seen some mention it)
And some cases with how time and data relate:
Staff have varied days and start/end times from week to week, this could be shift node with properties {shiftStart,shiftEnd,actualStart,actualEnd}, staff may arrive late or get sick during shift. Would this be the right way to link each shift to an employee? Employee(node)->Shifts(groupNode)->Shift(node)
Tables and Staff may have skill data modified, with archived data this could be an issue, I think the solution is to have time property on the relationship to the skill?
We open and close tables throughout the day, each table has open/close times for each day, this could change in a month depending on what management wants, in addition the times are not strict, for various reasons a manager may open or close tables during the shift. The open/closed status of a table node may only be relevant for queries during the shift, which confuses me as I'd want this for queries but for archiving with time it might not make sense?
It's with queries that I have trouble deciding when to use a node or add a property to a node. For an Employee they have a name and ID number, if I wanted to find an employee by their ID number would it be better to have that as a node of it's own? It would be more direct right, instead of going through all employees for that unique ID number.
I've also come across labels just recently, I can understand that those would be useful for typing employee and table nodes rather than grouping them under a node. With the shifts for an employee I think should continue to be grouped with a shifts node, If I were to do cypher queries for employees working shifts through a time period a label might be appropriate, however should it be applied to individual shift nodes or the shifts group node that links back to the employee? I might need to add a property to individual shift nodes or the relationship to the shifts group node? I'm not sure if there should be a shifts group node, I'm assuming that reducing the edges connecting to the employee node would be optimal for queries.
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If there are any great resources I can learn about database development that'd be great, there is so much information and options out there it's difficult to know what to begin with. Thanks for your time :)
Thanks for spending the time to put a quality question together. Your requirements are great and your specifications of your system are very detailed. I was able to translate your specs into a graph data model for Neo4j. See below.
Above you'll see a fairly explanatory graph data model. In case you are unfamiliar with this, I suggest reading Graph Databases: http://graphdatabases.com/ -- This website you can get a free digital PDF copy of the book but in case you want to buy a hard copy you can find it on Amazon.
Let's break down the graph model in the image. At the top you'll see a time indexing structure that is (Year)->(Month)->(Day)->(Hour), which I have abbreviated as Y M D H. The ellipses indicate that the graph is continuing, but for the sake of space on the screen I've only showed a sub-graph.
This time index gives you a way to generate time series or ask certain questions on your data model that are time specific. Very useful.
The bottom portion of the image contains your enterprise data model for your casino. The nodes represent your business objects:
Game
Table
Employee
Skill
What's great about graph databases is that you can look at this image and semantically understand the language of your question by jumping from one node to another by their relationships.
Here is a Cypher query you can use to ask your questions about the data model. You can just tweak it slightly to match your questions.
MATCH (employee:Employee)-[:HAS_SKILL]->(skill:Skill),
(employee)<-[:DEALS]-(game:Game)-[:LOCATION]->(table:Table),
(game)-[:BEGINS]->(hour:H)<-[*]-(day:D)<-[*]-(month:M)<-[*]-(year:Y)
WHERE skill.type = "Blackjack" AND
day.day = 17 AND
month.month = 1 AND
year.year = 2014
RETURN employee, skill, game, table
The above query finds the sub-graph for all employees who have the skill Blackjack and their table and location on a specific date (1/17/14).
To do this in SQL would be very difficult. The next thing you need to think about is importing your data into a Neo4j database. If you're curious on how to do that please look at other questions here on SO and if you need more help, feel free to post another question or reach out to me on Twitter #kennybastani.
Cheers,
Kenny
I am planning on creating a database to track user's time in/time out M-F. Every week should begin on monday and run through sunday.
I have a table filled with my entire user population, so I know which users I need to create entries for and where they belong to. I have proposed so far, a table consisting of the following fields to track the entries (along with example data to fill the fields):
Field Name in table (Example of possible data)
---------------------
Employee (John Smith) 'String
Unit (Quality Assurance) 'String
WeekOf (9/9/13) 'date
InMonday (6:30) 'string, validate either a time in/out or N/A if holiday/vacation
OutMonday (3:15) '^^
HoursWorkedMonday (8.00) 'total hours worked
VacationMonday (0.00) 'if N/A for time, should have hours here
OvertimeMonday (0.00) 'any additional work hours should go here
For this instance, I would have to create In/Out for each day of the week (and perhaps track the date that each day is for). Is this extraneous or is there a seemingly better organization to tracking weekly time measurements? Should I use one table with a unit indicator or multiple tables for each unit?
Usually it's one table with a Date field, an In field and an Out field. That's pretty much standard timesheet data. Take a look at how this guy has it set up.
Make sure you're using an Employee ID in the timesheet, and then you would have a corresponding Employee table with all relevant info (ID, Name, Address, whatever else you store on him/her).
While this project is technically feasible, I have to question the value of making it yourself in Access.
The main issue is with security:
As a desktop program, this can be very easy to hack without precautions. Keep in mind that with Access, the user interface and the designer interface are by default the same thing.
If this is going to be a simple, straightforward db, a motivated user just needs to open the navigation panel and they can add/edit/delete all the timesheets.
If you hide the navigation panel, the user can just do a quick google search and learn to hit F11 (or find it by accident, either way)
You can try regularly (daily? hourly?) transferring the data from the publicly accessible back-end to an archive db that is not accessible to the general users. This can work, but still gives them a window to edit records. And if you don't do the transfer right, they can still add old records.
As a webform on a SharePoint, this can be fairly secure. I'd recommend this if you have Sharepoint.
You should also consider your development time. This is a very common business task across many industries, from restaurants to factories to schools. As such, there's a huge number of cheap web-based options already out there that you can start using today. I'll even assume some of these include summary reviews breaking out numbers by departments as well.
I've never researched these myself, but a quick google search found this interesting page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_software
I am building a student database for a high school. I have been able to solve most of my problems with the exception of one.
The tables I currently have are for records of the current school term. I am trying to find a way to permanently keep records for the first term, second term, third term and even after the student graduates. Student information will still be stored in the database permanently.
Please can anyone give me an idea of how I should build it?
Add a field "Term", where you write the term, which this record is for.
I think the most logical way is to have Year (calendar year) and Term (semester term: Spring, Summer, Fall) fields associated to each student. This way you could fully distinguish attendance by either calendar year or term. For graduation status you could add either graduation flag or graduation date, or both.
ADDED:
In response to comment below. Yes, I think it does make more sense to track prospective students and enrolled academic students separately. You either can track those in a stand along table or implement additional fields to the existing table. As an example, you could have a field person_status as enrolled, graduated, prospective.
Your ultimate structure really depends on what level of detail you try to achieve.
So I have this application that I'm drawing up and I start to think about my users. Well, My initial thought was to create a table for each group type. I've been thinking this over though and I'm not sure that this is the best way.
Example:
// Users
Users [id, name, email, age, etc]
// User Groups
Player [id, years playing, etc]
Ref [id, certified, etc]
Manufacturer Rep [id, years employed, etc]
So everyone would be making an account, but each user would have a different group. They can also be in multiple different groups. Each group has it's own list of different columns. So what is the best way to do this? Lets say I have 5 groups. Do I need 8 tables + a relational table connecting each one to the user table?
I just want to be sure that this is the best way to organize it before I build it.
Edit:
A player would have columns regarding the gear that they use to play, the teams they've played with, events they've gone to.
A ref would have info regarding the certifications they have and the events they've reffed.
Manufacturer reps would have info regarding their position within the company they rep.
A parent would have information regarding how long they've been involved with the sport, perhaps relations with the users they are parent of.
Just as an example.
Edit 2:
**Player Table
id
user id
started date
stopped date
rank
**Ref Table
id
user id
started date
stopped date
is certified
certified by
verified
**Photographer / Videographer / News Reporter Table
id
user id
started date
stopped date
worked under name
website / channel link
about
verified
**Tournament / Big Game Rep Table
id
user id
started date
stopped date
position
tourney id
verified
**Store / Field / Manufacturer Rep Table
id
user id
started date
stopped date
position
store / field / man. id
verified
This is what I planned out so far. I'm still new to this so I could be doing it completely wrong. And it's only five groups. It was more until I condensed it some.
Although I find it weird having so many entities which are different from each other, but I will ignore this and get to the question.
It depends on the group criteria you need, in the case you described where each group has its own columns and information I guess your design is a good one, especially if you need the information in a readable form in the database. If you need all groups in a single table you will have to save the group relevant information in a kind of object, either a blob, XML string or any other form, but then you will lose the ability to filter on these criteria using the database.
In a relational Database I would do it using the design you described.
The design of your tables greatly depends on the requirements of your software.
E.g. your description of users led me in a wrong direction, I was at first thinking about a "normal" user of a software. Basically name, login-information and stuff like that. This I would never split over different tables as it really makes tasks like login, session handling, ... really complicated.
Another point which surprised me, was that you want to store the equipment in columns of those user's tables. Usually the relationship between a person and his equipment is not 1 to 1 and in most cases the amount of different equipment varies. Thus you usually have a relationship between users and their equipment (1:n). Thus you would design an equipment table and there refer to the owner's user id.
But after you have an idea of which data you have in your application and which relationships exist between your data, the design of the tables and so on is rather straitforward.
The good news is, that your data model and database design will develop over time. Try to start with a basic model, covering the majority of your use cases. Then slowly add more use cases / aspects.
As long as you are in the stage of planning and early implementation phasis, it is rather easy to change your database design.
I'm new to the forum, and I've tried searching for an answer but I can't find specifically what I need. Here is the deal. For a collage project I have to make a car rental web application. I've come up with an idea what should it do and for that I've created my ER model. But I'm not sure if it's good. The thing is not to do very complicated application, but to cover one RAD tool. I've ended up with Iron Speed. Here is the idea of the application.
Customer can come to website of car rental, and make a reservation, beside other things he can choose start date, end date, and car.
Employee can edit, and see all the reservations, and also make a reservation if customer comes personally to "office". He can also add new cars to database (type of car + model etc.) and make a bill for each reservation.
Administrator can add new employe and everything else (but that's his main thing let's say).
Table USERS has all the information about employees and administrator, and roles has roles in it, and they need to have a bridge table (this is needed because of the RAD tool to make user roles permissions).
Information about customers won't be needed separately (this can be a bad thing but let's leave it that way), and we have their information in REZERVATION table.
NOTE - I know it would be logical to connect employee with reservation (one to many) but that gives me the problem that customer needs to select employee when making reservations, same with car adding, it's stupid to select employee to add car... I mean its logical that someone needs to put car into database. For bill it is logical so I know who made it.
Car type and car are connected with reservation that way so I can make filtering type - > model later in drop down menus.
Link to jpeg: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50541281/SnapShot_121124_220841.jpg
Link to mysql workbench file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/50541281/car%20rental.mwb
I would really appreciate it if someone who knows can modify it as needed, or put some bridge tables if needed. Or just type notes here so that I can adjust my schema myself.
Just to add, this is only let's say need to see version of ER model since I've just translated it from my language to English, so all attributes, types, etc are not there.
In this situation you may be best using a join during the sql statement to get the information. Assuming the employee doesn't have anything to do with this account until later in the process (after booking the car) you should leave it to the other interface. When the cars are booked an employee should log in and check, if they process the order then add the EmployeeID to the table then. Leave it without relationship, it seems messy but it is a quick solution.