Database Answers Civil Courthouse, Harris County, Texas.

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Judges and Courts
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This material is taken from a discussion on Google Groups - Database Theory, March 6th. 2006.
The discussion hinged on the differences between a normalised and a Denormalised Database.
The role of the normalised Database Is to clarify the solution and the denormalised Database is to simplify storage and display of data.
The Statement of Requirements defined by the User is as follows ...
Here's the Web Site for the State District Courts, Harris County, Texas, and here's a List of Judges.
This list of Courts shows that each court is assigned a number, which is in front of the judge name. 
For example, Judge Mark Davidson serves the 11th court. 
A Database is required to store data to be displayed on a Web Page like this one.

User Comments start here :-
I merged the Court and Judge entities as one entity.  
I could have easily replaced the word Staff with Position or something similiar. 
I know that technically, this could have been normalized more, but I 
think it matches the business model and isn't overkill.   
I'm very curious as to how this would be modelled, knowing its for a web environment. 
User Comments end here.

A. What are the Things of Interest ?
A.1 Buildings 
A.2 Courts
A.3 Judges
A.4 Locations
A.5 Positions
A.6 Staff 

B. What do we know about these Things ?
B.1 A Building has an Address. 
    An example of a Building is 301 Fannin, and a Location is 301 Fannin, 2nd Floor. 
B.2 Court Types are Civil, Criminal, Family, etc..
B.3 A Locations is a Floor in a building.
    Each judge must reside at exactly one location, but can move Locations from time to time. 
B.4 A member of Staff has a name, phone number, email, and a Position. 
    The Position can vary from time to time. Therefore there is a separate 'Positions' Table.    
    Positions include Bailiff, Clerk, Assistant Clerk, Coordinator and Court Reporter. 

C. How are these Things related ?
C.1 Each judge has 6 Staff members, each with a Position.
C.2 There are many Locations inside buildings (such as floors). 
C.3 Staff are assigned to Courts.
    A court has many different people associated with it, and these roles are consistent for every court.


Barry Williams
12th. March 2006
Principal Consultant
Database Answers

 

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