WCDE Resource Management Database

Waterloo Cases in Design Engineering (WCDE) group, at the University of Waterloo (UW), was established to generate engineering case studies to bridge the gap between theory and practice through the engineering case method. WCDE develops engineering cases primarily derived from experiences described in co-op work term reports generated by UW students, offering a unique opportunity to pervasively implement a broad range of inherently motivating case material throughout the curriculum. For the past several years, WCDE has been steadfast in developing and delivery of engineering case studies. Example of case implementation road map is illustrated in Figure 1. However, the difficulty of managing a large collection of written documents stems mainly from the inability to conveniently catalogue and retrieve case study resources. In order to support WCDE program activities, which includes work report harvesting, case development and case implementation, a well-designed WCDE Data Base Management System (DBMS) is crucial.

Therefore, a practical and reliable database was required that covers various aspects including issues like data types and access level (See Appendix A & B), indexing structures, and query functionality. Initially, a prototype system has to be introduced with general WCDE database requirements.

Figure 1  - Detailed case implementation outline using a roadmap format [1]