The Animal Genetic Resource Information Network (AnimalGRIN) Database: A Database Design & Implementation Case

This case describes a database redesign project for the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Germplasm Program (NAGP). The case provides a valuable context for teaching and practicing database analysis, design, and implementation skills, and can be used as the basis for a semester-long team project. The case demonstrates the broad applicability of database skills to domains outside typical business applications. The functional requirements for the NAGP’s information system are documented with a detailed set of use cases, which are commonly used in practice and which provides a link between the database course and the systems analysis and design course in many information systems curricula. The NAGP database redesign project was initiated because the original database design was not flexible or rigorous enough to handle the ways in which the organization’s needs grew. The case provides several opportunities to emphasize design flexibility and data integrity controls