Sultan Qaboos University

College of economics and political science

Department of information system
INFS2412~Introduction to Management Information Systems
Section (10)
Spring 2023

Magic Book
Database Project Management
Table of Contents
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................3
Description of business........................................................................................................................................ 3
Problem Faced ...................................................................................................................................................... 3
System solutions.................................................................................................................................................... 3
System description ................................................................................................................................................ 3
Entities With Relationship Diagram ......................................................................................................4
Entities .........................................................................................................................................................5
User Table .............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Book Table ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Borrowing Table ................................................................................................................................................... 6
Reservation Table ................................................................................................................................................. 6
Review Table ......................................................................................................................................................... 7
Review-user Table ................................................................................................................................................ 7
Forms...........................................................................................................................................................8
Users form.............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Books form............................................................................................................................................................. 8
Borrowing form .................................................................................................................................................... 9
Reservations form ................................................................................................................................................. 9
Queries ..................................................................................................................................................... 10
Users who have borrowed two or more books .............................................................................................. 10
Top-rated books based on user review ........................................................................................................... 11
Overdue Books ................................................................................................................................................... 12
Active reservation .............................................................................................................................................. 13
Reports ...................................................................................................................................................... 14
Active reservation .............................................................................................................................................. 14
Overdue Books ................................................................................................................................................... 14
Top-rated books based on user review ........................................................................................................... 15
Users who borrow two or more books ............................................................................................................ 15
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 16

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Introduction

Description of business
We are a team consisting of ambitious youths who aim to promote the reading culture between
sultan Qaboos university students by facilitating the book lending and borrowing process. This
database will certainly assist students to find the right books at the right time in different methods.
For example, the database will provide a suitable and attractive environment to lend and borrow
books with an affordable price for students. Also, this database will benefit both lender and
borrower by providing rent profit for lenders and saving money for borrowers. Furthermore, there
is an agreement between everyone that confirms the importance of reading and owning books in
which it is considered as a method to promote intelligence and awareness. Moreover, we all know
that the suffering in the process of purchasing books for students, especially those who can't afford
the cost of books and when that desired book is not available locally in libraries, our project will
offer a solution for those students by providing them with the desired books at an affordable price.

Problem Faced
This database project appeared as a solution of some problems and challenges faced SQU students
such as the problem of availability of books, high prices of some books with the shipping and
delivery costs that put a student in a bad situation, and even if the student has an opportunity to
borrow books from some sources, there is possibility that the student will get a partially or fully
damaged book. These are some problems that make our team generate a contribution to facilitate
the process of possessing books inside SQU campus.

System solutions
Our team tried to create a database project that provides an environment linked between borrowers
and lenders with a determinate reservation system. The database project would provide books that
students want and desire to read by encouraging all SQU students to be contributors and put their
undesired books in a specific allocation point and that allocation points is like the machines held
in the college liberties, also these machines will be existed in a most crowded points inside the
SQU campus like teach buildings and rest rooms. Even the student who try to find a book can be
a contributor by lending his or her undesired books to our team and then we directly deliver the
book to other students, so the process will be an integrated operation. Secondly, our database
project will be a cost saver for poor students by providing a big range of books that maybe make
a student is concerned about and then he or she can borrow the book with a reasonable price and
if the student make a delay, the database will issue a primary warning for the student and if there
is no response from him then we will issue a delay fee so, if the student want to expand the
borrowing period, then he or she can apply a formal request to avoid any issues. Finally, our team

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provides a guarantee that the lender book will have a good condition for the borrowers to read and
consume that book and get benefits from it.

System description
The database basically consists of six main entities and relationships which are user, book,
borrowing, reservation, review, and review-user. That database would enable the student to make
a reservation for an offered book that he or she thinks is suitable, and the student will be able to
see the ratings, comments, type, and every information that is related to the book that he or she
desires. The database project can also show the status of the book whether it is available or not an
issue warning for late users to organize the borrowing process.

Entities With Relationship Diagram

(Database Diagram)

For any database to be as effective as possible there must be some relationships between entities,
and our database consists of six main relationships most of it considered as one-to-many
relationships. As we can see from the diagram, the User table has the biggest number of
relationships because it is linked with borrowing, reservation, and review-user tables. Then the
book table is linked with the User table by reservation and borrowing tables.

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Entities

User Table
The user table includes some information about the customer, user-ID as a primary key, username, name,
e-mail address, phone number, and address.

Book Table
This table contains the book's details, book-ID as a primary key, book title, the author, publisher, publication
date, and genre.

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Borrowing Table
This table shows all the borrowing transactions showing, borrowing-ID as a primary key, user-ID, book-
ID, borrowing date, return date, and the borrowing status.

Reservation Table
In this table, we can see the reservation status it includes, reservation-ID as a primary key, user-
ID, book-ID, reservation date, and status.

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Review Table
This table represents some reviews of the books by the users. It has, review-ID, user-ID, book-ID,
review date, rating out of five, and a short comment about the book.

Review-user Table
This is a many to many relationships table which contains two primary keys, review-ID, and user-ID.

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Forms

In the form section, we have a wide range of forms that make it easier for both parties
(borrower - book lender) to work under one system and help us to control as system
administrators.

Users form

A Users form might be used to add

new users to the system, change
the information of current users, or
delete users. For example, the form
may have fields for the user's
name, email address, as well as
buttons for adding, editing, and
deleting users.

Books form

A Books form might be used to

add new books to the system, edit
current book data, or delete books.
The form might have sections for
the title, author, publisher date,
genre, and available copies, as
well as buttons for adding,
editing, and deleting books.

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Borrowing form
A form borrowed might be utilized for
monitoring when a book is borrowed
and when it is returned. The form, for
example, may have fields for selecting
the person who borrowed the book, the
book borrowed, and the date the book
was borrowed. The form might also
contain a button that records when the
book is returned.

Reservations form
Users may make reservations for
books that are currently not available
by using a reservation form.

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Queries

There are four different queries in this database, so it's going to be easier and more efficient for
the company to use them. However, there are few questions that a firm should perform this task
on its own.

Users who have borrowed two or more books

To combine the User, Borrow, and Book tables based on a user ID, this query uses an internal join
to group results based on that user ID. A table containing the user ID, username, and number of
book loans will be returned for each user who has more than two book loans once this query is
executed. This information can then be used to contact these users and request the return of some
of the books they have borrowed for the benefit of other users who wish to borrow them. However,
it can also be used to motivate those who have a desire to read by offering them discounts.

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Top-rated books based on user review

The result of this query will be a table showing the title and rating of each book with user’s name,
ID and the highest rating, using an inner join to combine the User, Books and Reviews tables based
on the book ID, and then filtering the results to show only books with the highest rating. Please
note that this query returns every one of these books if they have the same highest rating.

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Overdue Books

This query uses two internal joins to combine borrowing, book and user tables based on the
Book ID and User ID so that only rows where a book has not been returned yet but is due at
an earlier time are filtered.

The query will result in a table listing the name of each late book, its users' ID, and title from
which it has been borrowed, as well as an expiry date on that book. This information may be
used for following up with users and requesting their return of books which have not been
returned.

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Active reservation

The query uses the two inner joins to combine Reservations, Books and Users tables based on
book ID or user ID, filtering results by rows that have not yet been filled in.

The query results will be a table where the title of each book with an open reservation is shown,
the user's ID and username used to make the reservation, as well as the date and time when it
was made. This information could enable you to complete a reservation and notify users that
their required books have been made available.

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Reports

Using reports in Microsoft Access helps the users as well as the employees to have quick access
to the transactions data. To organize the company transactions, we have created five different
reports which are, active reservation, average rating for each book, overdue books, top-rated books
based on user review, and users who borrow two or more books.

Active reservation
This report shows the active book reservations with some details about the books and the users

Overdue Books
Here are the books that should be returned earlier. The report contains user-ID, name of the user,
title of the book, borrowing-ID, book-ID, borrowing date, return date and the status which is her
overdue for all books in the report.

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Top-rated books based on user review
In this report the report displays the books discerningly from the larger score to the smaller.

Users who borrow two or more books

This report shows the users who borrow multiple books (more than one book). By displaying user-
ID, his or her name and the number of books the user has borrowed so far.

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Conclusion

In conclusion, Sultan University's "magic book" initiative has been a success in fostering reading
habits among students by giving low-cost access to books. Not only has the initiative made it easier
for students to borrow books, but it has also pushed them to read more by providing a reward
system based on the number of books borrowed. This project has aided in the establishment of a
reading culture among kids, which is critical for their academic and personal growth. The project
was also able to last because of the efforts of student volunteers, which made it possible to keep
running on a small budget. The "Magic Book" project at Sultan University has contributed
significantly to the improvement of literacy culture and its success serves as a role model for other
educational institutions in their efforts to encourage young people to read.

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