Practical 1: Course Tools

exercises
lab
databases
er-model

Introduces the two tools used throughout the course: diagrams.net (draw.io) for building ER diagrams, and Gradescope for submitting assessment. This practical itself is not assessable — it’s onboarding practice before Assignment 1.

Task 1 — Recreate the “Always a Gamer” diagram in draw.io

UoD: a fictional gaming company’s GAME entity (Name, Year, Language, Description, Console) specialises two separate, disjoint (d) ways:

  • How it’s played: SINGLEPLAYER (Characters) or MULTIPLAYER (MinPlayers, MaxPlayers).
  • Whether it can be won: WINNABLE, or NON-WIN (Purpose).

NON-WIN games also have a recursive SEQUEL relationship to other NON-WIN games (roles PrequelTo/SequelTo, 1:1).

flowchart TD
    GAME[GAME] --- d1(("d"))
    d1 --- SINGLEPLAYER[[SINGLEPLAYER]]
    d1 --- MULTIPLAYER[[MULTIPLAYER]]
    GAME --- d2(("d"))
    d2 --- WINNABLE[[WINNABLE]]
    d2 --- NONWIN[["NON-WIN"]]
    NONWIN ---|"1 PrequelTo"| SEQUEL{SEQUEL}
    SEQUEL ---|"1 SequelTo"| NONWIN

    Name(["Name"]) --- GAME
    Year(["Year"]) --- GAME
    Language(["Language"]) --- GAME
    Description(["Description"]) --- GAME
    Console(["Console"]) --- GAME
    Characters(["Characters"]) --- SINGLEPLAYER
    MinPlayers(["MinPlayers"]) --- MULTIPLAYER
    MaxPlayers(["MaxPlayers"]) --- MULTIPLAYER
    Purpose(["Purpose"]) --- NONWIN

Recreate this EER diagram yourself in draw.io — see the course’s linked draw.io usage guide for the mechanics (shapes, connecting entities to a relationship diamond, exporting).

Task 2 — Using the ER diagram

Question 1 — Identifying entities

Which entity type is the superclass that every other entity type in this diagram specialises from (directly or indirectly)?

GAME is the superclass. Its two disjoint specialisations are SINGLEPLAYER/MULTIPLAYER (one d-circle) and WINNABLE/NON-WIN (a separate d-circle) — four subclasses total, all ultimately specialising GAME.

Task 2.2 — Exporting the diagram

Export the finished diagram from draw.io as an image and insert it into the practical’s Gradescope submission template — no fixed “right answer” here, just confirms the export step works.

Task 3 — Submitting via Gradescope

Submit via the Gradescope link on the course Blackboard site. Not assessable — purely to confirm your Gradescope account is set up correctly ahead of Assignment 1.