HopeLink Community Support and Food Security Database
This assignment requires students to design, develop and analyse a relational database for HopeLink Community Support and Food Security, a fictitious non-profit organisation working across rural and urban communities to reduce poverty and hunger. HopeLink currently relies on spreadsheets, which have resulted in inefficiencies and reporting errors. The proposed database is intended to improve operational efficiency, transparency and evidence-based reporting while supporting the organisation's work towards United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 1 and 2: No Poverty and Zero Hunger. The database development project involves five main entities: Beneficiary, Donor, Product, Collection and Collection Detail. Students are required to create a data dictionary defining the tables, attributes and appropriate validation rules. They must then use SQL within Microsoft Access to create the required tables through SQL View, rather than using the Access front end. Primary keys and foreign keys must be identified and implemented as part of the database design. Students must also establish relationships between the database entities and enforce referential integrity to maintain accurate information for management reporting and decision-making. Appropriate validation rules, user-friendly error messages, drop-down lists and input masks should be implemented where required. The database must be populated with sufficient realistic data for testing, with minimum requirements of 10 Beneficiary records, 10 Donor records, 20 Product records, 10 Collection records and 20 Collection Detail records. A further component requires students to develop five useful SQL queries in Microsoft Access to support analysis and reporting for HopeLink. The queries must follow specific requirements, including one parameter query, at least three queries containing a WHERE clause, at least one aggregate query and at least two queries involving joins across more than two tables. Students must provide screenshots of the SQL code and resulting outputs, together with an English explanation and a short justification of how each query could support HopeLink's operations and decision-making. The final component is an 850-word maximum business insights report investigating the use of food banks in the UK and considering how initiatives could support SDG 1 and SDG 2. Students are expected to use reliable external data, present relevant graphs and analyse current trends in food-bank usage. This section requires Harvard referencing and should use reliable academic, industry and other appropriate sources. The report is based on SDG 1 and SDG 2 and is not directly linked to the database developed for the assignment. Overall, the assignment assesses students' ability to apply data-modelling techniques, database design principles, SQL and data analytics to support organisational operations and strategic decision-making. It combines practical database development in Microsoft Access with data analysis and a business-focused evaluation of food-bank trends and sustainability goals.
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