Thato, being ever curious and wanting to learn more about anything and everything, decided to
try his hand at creating a UML ERD for a relational database too. You made it look so easy after all,
so he was confident he could do it too. So, he wrote some new rules about a fictional
manufacturing company and created the below ERD based on some web pages he consulted.
Each product requires different components during the manufacturing process. A
component can be used in multiple different products.
The quantity of each component that is used for a specific product must be stored in
the database.
The name of each product and each component must be stored in the database.
Each component is bought from a specific supplier, and a supplier can supply many
different components.
The name and address of each supplier must be stored in the database.
Each production line manufactures exactly one type of product at a time.
A colour is allocated to each production line to make them easy to distinguish.
Comment on his diagram, explaining which 10 changes you recommend to improve the diagram
to align with the business rules. Explain why you would make each change too, so he can learn
from his mistakes. Also, include improvements that would make it possible to implement the
design in a relational database.
Hint: Include the diagram and add letters to the diagram that you can refer to in your comments.Give me a paragraph explaining how the ERD diagram is fixed
Here are 10 recommended changes to improve the ERD diagram:
1. Add a new entity for "Products" (entity A) to store information about each product, such as product name.
2. Add a new entity for "Components" (entity B) to store information about each component, such as component name.
3. Create a many-to-many relationship between Products (A) and Components (B) to represent the fact that each product requires different components during manufacturing. This relationship would have an attribute for the quantity of each component used for a specific product.
4. Add a new entity for "Suppliers" (entity C) to store information about each supplier, such as supplier name and address.
5. Create a many-to-many relationship between Components (B) and Suppliers (C) to represent the fact that a supplier can supply many different components.
6. Add a new attribute to the Production Lines (entity D) entity to store the allocated color for each production line.
7. Create a one-to-many relationship between Production Lines (D) and Products (A) to represent the fact that each production line manufactures exactly one type of product at a time.
8. Add attributes to the relationships to store any additional information, such as the quantity of components used in a specific product or the specific role of a supplier in supplying components.
9. Ensure that each entity has a primary key to uniquely identify each record in the database.
10. Normalize the database schema to reduce redundancy and improve data integrity.
By making these changes, the ERD diagram aligns more closely with the given business rules and improves the structure for implementing in a relational database. This revised design will help Thato better understand the relationships between the different entities and how they interact within the database.