An agency called Instant Cover supplies part-time/temporary staff to hotels within Scotland. The table shown in Figure 14.20 lists the time spent by agency staff working at various hotels. The National Insurance Number (NIN) is unique for every member of staff.

What will be an ideal response?

(a) The table shown is susceptible to update anomalies. Provide
examples of insertion, deletion, and update anomalies.
The student should provide examples of insertion, deletion and update anomalies using the data
shown in the table. An example of an update anomaly is if we wish to change the name of the
employee called ‘Smith J’, we may only change the entry in the first row and not the last with the
result that the database becomes inconsistent.
(b) Describe and illustrate the process of normalizing the table shown
3NF. State any assumptions you make about the data shown in this table.
The student should state any assumptions made about the data shown in the table. For example,
we may assume that a hotel may be associated with one or more contracts.