Hello all members,
I am new to this this website. I am working on an assignment and I have a scenario where I have to find the key attributes, entities and keys.

Below is the scenario,
An international courier, express and parcel Services Company is setting up a package shipping system for customers to ship packages. Whenever a customer wishes to ship a package, they can call the company’s customer service personnel to place a shipment request.
A computer system is needed to track the shipment details of the package. This will enable the company to keep track of their customer’s details, shipment details and to schedule a pick-up of the shipment.

Proposed System Operation
When a customer calls in to place a request for a shipment, the customer’s details, the company’s details (where applicable), the type of shipment request and the estimated cost of shipment are logged into the system by the customer service personnel. The courier company provides express delivery of packages by air, road, rail or ocean and allows customers to track the movement of the package. Each mode of delivery has a variety of services such as:

  • Day-specific, door-to-door delivery
  • Fast delivery services
  • Low cost delivery services
  • Handling of dangerous, fragile and temperature sensitive packages
  • Easy availability world wide

When the customer calls to place a request, the customer service personnel will provide several delivery options along with its cost. The system will maintain a log of the delivery options and its associated costs. Once the customer has decided on the delivery option, the shipment details are confirmed and the customer service personnel creates a log in the system if a pick-up service of the package is requested. The date, time and location to pick-up the package is also logged into the system in order for the logistics department to access the pick-up information. Once the package has been picked-up from the customer or delivered to the company, a package tracking number is assigned to each package in order for customers to track the movement of the package. The handling team uses a tracking device to scan the barcode on the package at each location from the source to the intended destination of the package. Upon scanning the barcode, the shipment details are displayed and the handling team is able to update the system with the current location of the package and the condition of the package. Once the package has been delivered to the requested destination, the recipient of the package will sign the delivery note to confirm receipt of the package. The recipient’s signature will be scanned into the system as proof to the customer of the receipt of the package. The delivery details will also be logged into the system. Report also listed according to Customer wise, Cost wise, Route wise, Source to Designation wise and parcel with time and days break up report.

I have identified the following entities -

  1. Customer.

  2. Package.

  3. Shipment.

  4. Staff.

  5. Delivery Option.

  6. Service Staff

  7. Package Movement.

  8. Delivery Detail.

I have to design an ER diagram too for this, so can anyone help me in this entities and key attributes please?

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Why should the scenario need changing every year???
It's still a valid problem to be solved, and could easily be one of a set of two or three scenarios that get cycled round each year so that this year's students can ask last year's students for the answer.
What matters is identifying the entities and their relationships. Apart from the tracking and shipping options it's similar to the standard problem used world wide with different variations and many colleges. And a variant of this was used in courses I took many years ago.

Keeping questions and scenarios fresh helps prevent lesser students (like this one) from just finding the answers online.

This problem has been solved hundreds of times, and there's an exact duplicate in this forum.

I don't mind helping but I like to see some effort first, not just pasting the question directly into a forum. If you want to help the OP do his homework without actually learning anything, go ahead.

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