HINF 6220 - Assignment 1

Note: You may have to do some research to answer these questions. All your answers should be self-contained and aimed at a non-technical audience, for example a non-technical health professional, that has no more than the basic experience of using email, word processing and browsing and searching the Web. Make sure your answers are free of acronyms, and technical jargon, which should be defined in intuitive terms when it is used for the first time. Do not exceed the indicated page limit, measured based on an 8.5x11 page, single spaced, with 1in margins, 12pt size in Times-new-roman font. Use Web search to find the information you require. Wikipedia may be useful. Remember to use your own words in all your answers. Paraphrase, do not copy from Web sources. Reference all your sources. The page limit does not include references.

Submission instructions:
Please submit your assignment electronically by emailing it to the instructor. Due time is 12 midnight on the due date posted. If no due date is posted, the date when the next assignment is posted is the due date of the previous assignment.
Use the following format for the subject line:
Subject: HINF6220 - Assignment N (where N=1,2,3,4)
Your submission should consist of one file in pdf format.
Use Acrobat (the full version, not the Reader), if you already have it, or one of the free converters (1 2). About the Portable Document Format ( pdf)
The name of the file should be the following:
HINF6220-AN-loginname.pdf , where loginname is your cs login name, and the N in AN is 1,2,3,4

Grading:
Each question will be graded with a letter grade, based on quality of content, quality of writing and demonstration of understanding of key concepts discussed in the lectures. Your answer should be self-contained and easy to read. The overall grade for the assignment will be a weighted average of the individual grades, where the weight is proportional to the size limit of each question (not counting program outputs, if any). Letter grades are being averaged using their GPA equivalent. No rounding takes place.
The meaning of the grades is as per the University Calendar, section 17.1.
This style of grading will be used in all evaluation components of this course.

1. Search in the medical informatics literature on the Web and find three papers published in the last two years that address the feasibility and acceptability of various aspects of health informatics. Critique the papers in the context of the discussion in our first lecture. (max. 2 pages).

2. Explain the similiarities and differences between spreadsheets and databases (feel free to research the topic on the Web, but please make sure you quote your sources) (max. 2 pages).

3. Consider a CONFERENCE_REVIEW database in which researchers submit their research papers for consideration. Reviews by reviewers are recorded for use in the paper selection process. The database caters primarily to reviewers who record answers to evaluation questions for each paper they review and make recommendations regarding whether to accept or reject the paper. The data requirements are summarized as follows:

• authors of papers are uniquely identified by email id. First and last names are also recorded
• each paper is assigned a unique id by the system and it is described by a title, abstract, and the name of the electronic file containing the paper
• a paper may have multiple authors, only one of whom is designated as the contact author
• reviewers of papers are uniquely identified by email address. Each reviewer's first name, last name, phone number, affiliation, and topics of interest are also recorded
• each paper is assigned between two and four reviewers. A reviewer rates each paper assigned to him/her on a scale of 1 to 10 in four categories: technical merit, readability, originality, and relevance to the conference. Finally each reviewer provides an overall recommendation regarding each paper.
• each review contains tow types of written comments: one to be seen by the review committee only and the other as feedback to the author(s).

Design an Entity-Relationship diagram for this database. Draw the design using Dia.

The free program Dia is a program to draw structured diagrams.contains primitives that make it easy to draw ER diagrams. Install Dia on your Windows computer. To access the ER primities, focus on the control window, and click on its pane labelled "Assorted" to expose a menu, from which you select "ER". The five ER primitives will appear. Click on one to select it and then click in the graphics window labelled "Diagram1.dia" to create an instance of the graphical primitive. Repeat to compose the ER diagram. To change the label of an ER primitive, right click on the primitive, select Properties, and edit the "Name" property. When you are done, you should save the diagram as a .dia file (File -> Save As) and export it as "Portable Network Graphics, *.png, file (File -> Export and select type .png). A .png file can be inserted into a Microsoft Word document.

4. Provide one example of each kind of integrity constraint in the CONFERENCE_REVIEW DATABASE above. Clearly explain your example in connection with the integrity constraint it illustrates. Use a diagram (schema), to complement your explanation, if necessary. (max 2 pages)

5. This question is based on the database introduced in the tutorial. You are required to write SQL statements to extract the information described. To make the problem easier, you are also given the answer that a correct SQL statement should return.