Question

Consider the following table:

Table: Student
Student_ID	Name	Age	Phone_Number
S001	Amit	15	9876543210
S002	Priya	16	8765432109
S003	Priya	15	7654321098

Answer the following questions:

1. You are given the task to design the student database for your school in LibreOffice Base. Based on the given table structure, suggest the data type of student_id and age field that would be suitable to store student’s-id and age, respectively.
2. As a database administrator, you need to ensure each student has a unique identifier. Which field in the table would you choose as the primary key, and why?
3. Identify the field that can serve as an alternate key. Justify your answer.
4. How many attributes and records are present in the above shown table?

Answer 1

a. Suitable Datatypes for Fields:

• Student_ID: Text (VARCHAR) - Because it has letters, numbers, and underscores (like “S001”) and needs storage of varying length.
• Age: It’s an integer (INT), since age is a number and works well with integer data types.

b. The Student_ID field should be the main key because it is the only way to identify each student in the database. The Student_ID will always be different, so each record is unique, even if the names are alike.

c. The Phone Number field can serve as an additional key because everyone has a unique phone number. If needed, it could also be used to identify a student. In this case, though, Student_ID is the main key.

d.

• Attributes: Student_ID, Name, Age, and Phone_Number are the four fields or characteristics in the table.
• Records: Three rows of records make up the table. Each row or record represents a student (S001, S002, S003).