Core Concepts in Database Design Principles Quiz

1. Normalization Fundamentals

   Which of the following best demonstrates a violation of the First Normal Form (1NF) when storing a student's phone numbers in a single table column?

   1. Storing multiple comma-separated phone numbers in one cell
   2. Creating a separate table for phone numbers
   3. Using an auto-increment primary key
   4. Assigning unique constraints on the phone number column
   5. Referencing student IDs as foreign keys for phone numbers

2. Entity-Relationship Model

   In an Entity-Relationship (ER) diagram for a university system, which of the following best represents a many-to-many relationship?

   1. A student enrolls in multiple courses and each course has many students
   2. A library has exactly one librarian
   3. A department has several offices but each office belongs to only one department
   4. An instructor teaches only one course
   5. A class is scheduled at one specific time

3. Functional Dependency

   Given a table storing employee ID, department name, and manager name, which scenario best illustrates a partial dependency?

   1. Manager name depends only on department name in a table where employee ID and department name are composite keys
   2. All employee records depend on a single, auto-generated key
   3. Department name depends on manager name and not employee ID
   4. Employee ID uniquely determines department name and manager
   5. Each department has several managers assigned per project

4. Referential Integrity Constraints

   Which of the following best describes an action that would violate referential integrity in a relational database?

   1. Deleting a parent record that is referenced by a foreign key in another table
   2. Inserting a duplicate primary key into a table
   3. Updating an attribute value in a lookup table
   4. Creating an index on the foreign key column
   5. Changing the column data type from integer to float

5. Surrogate vs. Natural Keys

   In designing a table to store citizen information, which situation best demonstrates the advantage of using a surrogate key over a natural key?

   1. Social Security numbers (natural key) are sometimes reassigned, so an auto-generated ID provides stable uniqueness
   2. The table only contains a single column for first names
   3. Each row is guaranteed to have a unique phone number as an identifier
   4. The combination of date of birth and city name is always unique for all citizens
   5. Users prefer to search by last name rather than numeric values