In this course we assume that you are already familiar with some database concepts and with the design process, using the entiry-relationship model. This subject is treated in the introductory course on information systems ISO (2R290). We assume not only that you took this course (or some equivalent course at another college or university) but also that you passed that course. In particular, you should by now master the process of database design.
When you read a description of how a company or organization wants to store, manipulate and retrieve information, you can translate this into an E-R schema that represents all the information of the natural-language problem description.
In the natural language description there are constraints, like for instance “every bank account has only one balance”. You can correctly add cardinality constraints to an E-R schema, to express these constraints in the problem description.
You can transform an E-R schema to a relational schema, with tables. You can correctly identify redundant tables or attributes and remove them without loss of information.
You can identify primary keys for the tables.
Conversely you are also able to read a database definition, given either as an E-R schema or as tables, with constraints and primary keys, and describe this information system specification in natural language.
If you do not fit this description, if you do not know enough about database design, you will encounter difficulties during this course. You should certainly study chapter 2 of the database book, and make sure you master this chapter before going on with Databases 1.