NURS 6411: Information and Knowledge Management | Week 5

Throughout this course, you have been exploring how databases are used in health care organizations to store, organize, and navigate large quantities of patient data and information. Before you can develop those databases, however, you need to have a firm grasp of key principles and terminology. This will ensure that you can create a database that will save and retrieve information in the most efficient manner. Microsoft Access is a database application that can be used to simplify the process. It is, therefore, an important and powerful tool for nurse informaticists to have in their toolkit. In order to use it effectively, however, you must understand the structure of a database.

This week, you review some of the key concepts involved in creating a database. In particular, the focus is on examining exactly what is meant by the term relational database. You also gain hands-on experience using Access. You begin working with features in Access including tables and queries.

Learning Objectives – NURS 6411: Week 5: Fundamentals of Relational Databases Assignment

Students will:

• Analyze the relationship between relational and entity relational databases
• Develop a conceptual model for a database

Learning Resources

Required Readings

Coronel, C. & Morris, S. (2017). Database systems: Design, implementation, and management (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

• Chapter 3, “The Relational Database Model” (review) (pp. 71-106)
• Chapter 4, “The Entity Relationship Model (ERM)” (review) (pp. 117-152)

Cox, J. & Lambert, J. (2013). Step by step: Microsoft Access 2013. Richland, WA: Microsoft Press.

• Chapter 2, “Creating Databases and Simple Tables” (pp. 53–90)>In this chapter, the authors demonstrate how to create databases both from templates and manually, how to construct a table structure, and how to define the relationship between tables.
• Chapter 3, “Create Simple Forms” (pp. 91–114)The focus of this chapter is creating forms, which enables standardized data to be entered into a database. The authors demonstrate how to create, format and customize the layout of forms.
• Chapter 4, “Display Data” (pp. 115–134)This chapter concentrates on sorting and filtering information within a database in order to locate and display desired information. It begins with simple sorts and progresses through displaying information that matches specific, multiple criteria.

Optional Resources

There are a wide variety of online tutorials available to assist with using Microsoft Access. Below are several you might consider, as needed:

Goodwill Community Foundation, Inc. (2010). Access 2010. Retrieved from http://www.gcflearnfree.org/office

This free resource provides a series of lessons, interactives, and video tutorials to assist in learning how to use Access 2010.

Pollock, A. (2010). Access 2010 essential training. Retrieved from http://www.lynda.com/Access-2010-tutorials/essential-training/62642-2.html

This series of videos provides detailed instruction on all aspects of Microsoft Access 2010 use. This resource requires a paid subscription.

Discussion: Core Database Principles

When embarking on any new project or learning experience, it is essential that you have a strong foundation of understanding constructed from key concepts and parameters. As you begin your work with databases and database design, you should develop a firm understanding of key concepts and parameters that are critical to the foundation of all database design.

In this Discussion, you examine these key fundamental principles of database design.

To prepare:

• Review the information in this week’s Learning Resources concerning relational and entity relational databases. Focus on how the two are interconnected.
• Review information concerning cardinalities and consider what they are, how they are developed, and their role in database design.
• Review information concerning business rules, what they represent, and how they are reflected in the entity relationship diagrams.
• Review the conceptual model (Figure Q4.5) on page 150 of your text, Database Systems: Design, Implementation, and Management  Think of a similar example of how each of these concepts would be reflected in a database design for your own organization.

By Day 3

Post a brief analysis of the connection between entity relational modeling and relational databases. Discuss a brief example of a conceptual model that could be used in your own organization and list at least one business rule and two cardinalities that apply to that model.

Read a selection of your colleagues’ responses.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days. Help clarify their explanations of key concepts. For the conceptual model they provided, suggest an additional cardinality that would apply and why it would be necessary to use it. NURS 6411: Week 5: Fundamentals of Relational Databases Assignment.

ADDITIONAL INFO 

Fundamentals of Relational Databases

Introduction

A relational database, or RDBMS for short, is a type of database that stores and manages data in rows and columns. Each record (or row) contains information about one person, place or thing, as well as other related records that may be stored elsewhere in the database.

What are tables?

A table is a collection of data. In relational databases, tables are organized into rows and columns.

Columns are fields that store information about the records in your database. For example, you might have an employee table with several fields for each employee: name (the name), position (the job title), age at hire date (age at first day on job) and last name field because it’s helpful to know who they work for when searching for them later on in life!

Rows represent individual records within your database; they contain all necessary information about one specific person or object being represented by those columns on their own row within this specific table which we call “employee” here but maybe another one named “salary details” would also have salary details listed alongside other important details such as location info etcetera depending upon what type(s) of data types need updating regularly throughout time period over which period we’re interested in observing performance trends so bear this in mind when designing any kind

What are columns?

What are columns?

Columns are the individual fields in a table. They can be defined as nullable or not nullable, unique or not unique, and so on.

What is a primary key?

A primary key is a unique identifier for a record in a table. It must be unique, so you can’t have two records with the same primary key. The most common type of primary key is a combination of fields from different tables that are combined together and assigned as one field value (e.g., last_name + first_name).

In relational databases, there are three types of relationships: One-to-One (aka Association), One-to-Many (aka Cross-Referencing), and Many-to-Many (aka Networking).

What is a foreign key?

A foreign key is a field in one table that refers to the primary key of another table. It’s used to enforce referential integrity, which means ensuring that all data in your database is related and that you have a way to link it together. This can be done through primary keys or foreign keys.

What is SQL and how do you use it with a database?

SQL stands for Structured Query Language, and it’s a language that allows you to interact with databases.

SQL is used to write queries and update data in a database. It’s also used to create and manipulate tables, columns, indexes and relationships between tables.

To use SQL in your applications:

• The first step is to create an object called DataSource which provides access to the underlying database connection object (usually named SqlConnection). This will be available for all subsequent calls made by your application until it’s closed or disposed of by another function in your code base (e.g., Dispose Farmville Database Connection). If no connection exists yet then you can instantiate one by calling CreateDataSource(); if there already exists one but it wasn’t created using CreateDataSource() then use OpenOrCreate().

• Once we have our connection ready we now need some information about what kind of data source type we’re going after – whether we’re looking at just standard relational databases or even something more exotic like NoSQL stores! We’ll cover this later on when discussing each type individually later on in this article series…

Takeaway:

The takeaway from this section is that SQL is a language that allows you to interact with databases. SQL is the most common database language, and it’s used to query and manipulate data in relational databases. Relational databases use an abstraction layer called schema (schema means “shape”), which allows users to create tables, columns and rows of data using SQL statements. You can read more about schema here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(database).

Conclusion

In the end, it’s important to remember that relational databases are powerful tools that can help you solve some of your most challenging problems. They’re also incredibly flexible and customizable. As long as you understand how these databases work and take advantage of them in the way that suits your needs best, there’s no limit when it comes to what you can do with one!