Feedback on Your Choices in Volunteer Now: A Role-Playing Simulation on Database Design

Name: Madisyn Olguin
1. Entity Choices
Points: 9 out of 9
Your choices for the entities are listed below, along with correct answers:

Your Choices

Correct Choices

Points Earned

Organizations

Volunteers

0

Volunteers

Organizations

0

VolunteerActivities

VolunteerActivities

3

Total Points

9

Well done!
2. Should activities be attributes in the Volunteers table?
Points: 5 out of 5
You selected No. Good choice! Volunteers and VolunteerActivities represent a one to many relationship, so each volunteer can have 0 to more activities. VolunteerActivities should thus be a separate table, that can be linked with a foreign key (VolunteerID) to
How would you modify the database schema so that this information could be included?
I would modify the database schema to include an attribute under the entities represented by the organization. For example, the volunteer-activities attribute we chose, we could have an activity comment be the fact the volunteer must affirm they are not allergic to dogs or cats for the animal shelter opportunity. We could also make it a primary key for that specific organization. A primary key makes the record unique in the table, and that is certainly a unique attribute that the animal shelter needs to be aware of.
2. One volunteer contacted Star and said he could no longer volunteer because he was moving away from the area, but would still like to receive email when opportunities arise so he can pass them along to his friends. Can the database handle this? If not, how would you change the schema to track a request like this?
As of right now the database can not handle this, so one way we can change the schema to track a request like this is putting in a foreign key. Foreign keys are a connection of entities to one another in meaningful ways. One foreign key we could put in is between the volunteer's ID and the a volunteering activity. We can have these connected, so when a new volunteering activity is made available, it is made known to the volunteer ID via email.
This would allow that volunteer to still be in the loop with volunteering opportunities.
3.