Answers: Scenario 1 and Scenario 2.
Scenario 1: Marketing assistant for a consumer electronics company and are in charge of setting up your company’s booth at trade shows. Weeks before a show, you meet with the marketing managers and determine what displays and equipment they want to display. Then, you identify each of the components that need to be shipped and schedule a shipper to deliver them to the trade show site. You then supervise trade show personnel as they set up the booths and equipment. After the show, you supervise packing the booth and all the equipment as well as schedule its shipment back to your home office. When the equipment arrives, you check it into your warehouse to ensure that all pieces of the booth and all the equipment are returned. If there are any problems due to shipping damage or loss, you handle those problems. Your job is important; at a typical show, you are responsible for more than a quarter-million dollars of equipment.
Typical fields for each type of data.
In order to tract data concerning shipment, the booth components, the shippers and data concerning the equipment, various question surfaces that are instrumental in determining the various data needed. These questions include, who shipped the components? What was the condition of the consignment before being shipped? Who signed for it? What where the needed equipment at the show? Among other pertinent questions.
Data
Data will be recorded based on the generated questions and will include the following fields:
Fields
The following represent plausible field data entries for tracking the equipment and document the shipper information:
Condition of the equipment
Type of equipment
Person who signed for the equipment
Condition of the booth
Destination of the equipment
Disclaimer over shipping policies
Expected arrival time of shipment
Details whether equipment will arrive on time
Expected time of transportation
Drop of points of the equipment
Shipper (Address, phone numbers, email addresses, contact point)
Equipment (model number, serial numbers, equipment tag, descriptions)
Relationships
Once the relevant fields are created in the database, relationships can then be drawn. In this case, several relationships can be drawn. However, only two will be highlighted here
One to one relationship (name of the equipment and date signed)
In this case, a relationship is drawn between the date the equipment was signed off from the shipping point or booth, against the type or name of the equipment. This is a one to one relationship. A serial number or product code may be used in this case to trace the equipment and link it up with the date of signing of the consignment. Consequentially, it is possible to trace the equipment from the time it was released from the booth until it is received.
One to many (relationship between equipment models types and date released for shipment)
In this relationship, databases are given more than one relationships. Each record can now relate to many other records in the table. In this case, a relationship can be made between the different models of equipment shipped with the time of their release for shipping.
Do you need a database system? If not, can Excel® handle the data and the output? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
A database system is necessary in this case. A database system will help in organizing the different data fields into tables, queries and present varying relationships. Since information is required concerning the status of the equipment, a database system will be effective in illustrating these relationships as Vicknair, et al., (2010) observes.
Advantages and disadvantages
With regard to the pros, data will be accessed by multiple users concurrently while maintaining data integrity. Data will also be accessed remotely, securely and redundant information will be avoided and eliminated. Additionally, concurrency of data will be achieved.
However, maintain the hardware and software system will be costly, training the staff to manage the system will also be costly as well as the process of converting the data. However, these cons are incomparable to the plausible benefits the system will bring hence the system wil be adopted.
Personal database or an enterprise database?
Using a personal database will be most ideal. According to Brodie, & Mylopoulos, (2012), Enterprise DBMSs mostly benefits corporations and governments since a lot of data is handled. Being a small shipment, as is the case in this illustration, such a system is unnecessary. However, opting for a personal database comes with its challenges. First, the scalability of a personal DBMS is low. This means that the database may fail to handle multiple and simultaneous transactions. However, since limited number of people will be accessing this database, the need for an Enterprise DBMS is unwarranted.
Would a decision support system (DSS) be helpful?
A decision support system (DSS) will come in handy in the decision making process. Being an effective tool in the operation, planning or organization level of any organization, the decision support system (DSS) will help make decisions concerning the consignment from the booth. Being a management query, the decision support system (DSS) will also offer insights concerning the booth components, shippers, equipment and the shipment. Furthermore, with the help of a DBMS, analytic techniques can be combined with conventional database management and facilitate information retrieval (Brodie & Mylopoulos, 2012). Finally, with the help of a decision support system (DSS), mandatory computer knowledge is unwarranted since it can be easily used and interpreted and decision making process will be faster. The flexibility and adaptability of the decision support system (DSS) makes it a very helpful system in the decision making process.
Scenario 2:
Managing Seven employees in a small consulting business. Some employees work at home and some work in the office. Each of the employees needs to be connected to the Internet.
WAN or LAN?
The company needs a WAN (Wide Area Network). Compared to LAN, a (wide area network) WAN is not limited to a geographical location albeit it may be confined within some geographical location or within a country or region (Kalitay & Nambiar, 2011). Given that the group of seven employees in the small consulting business work from both the office and from home, all requiring internet connectivity, WAN will be the appropriate network. As Kalitay & Nambiar, (2011) documents, WAN links multiple LANs. Local Area Networks on the other hand are only suitable for smaller and more local connections such as a business premises or a school setup. However, benefits of either network exists. WAN for instance, offers a wide area of connectivity albeit it’s more expensive compared to Local Area Networks. Problems with security of data also surface with regard to Wide Area Networks.
Does your business require wireless?
The business does not need a wireless network connectivity. Based on the nature of the business model, where employees also work from home, a wireless internet connectivity may appear necessary. However, being a small business, with the employees working from their office spaces, and also considering other factors such as data security, a wireless connection is unnecessary. As Kalitay & Nambiar, (2011) documents, small businesses have over time, embraced their need for wireless connectivity. Among the chief reasons for this move is the desire to increase connectivity in the work place. Simultaneously, employee productivity where boosted by this move. Furthermore, wireless connectivity offers an alternative to Ethernet based connections. In this business however, wireless connectivity may be unnecessary due to the limited operational base. With the expansion of the business however, whereby employees work in different floors of the business premise, wireless LAN (WLAN) may be a viable option due to its wide coverage and the minimization of costs in the installation of Ethernet connection points.
Data sensitivity and need for protection. Do you need to use a VPN?
Being a consulting firm, data is bound to be private to some degree. As such, securing the data is mandatory. Data security according to Brodie & Mylopoulos, (2012) refers to the protection of data such as a database against potentially destructive elements or from access by unauthorized persons. Various methods of securing the data exist such as creating backups so that data can be accessed from other access points can be used. Alternatively, data encryption can be done or data masking, which will ensure the security of the data.
However, since private information will be shared via WAN, A virtual private network (VPN) is needed. A virtual private network (VPN) is helpful in extending a private network over a public network like the internet. In the case of the company, this move will allow the employees working from home to access private information securely. A virtual private network (VPN) functions in a similar fashion as the wide area network and from a user’s viewpoint, extended network resources can be accessed similarly to resources being accessed within a secure network. The point to point topology that characterizes virtual private network (VPN) networks may however limit the use of software or hinder communications because of the OSI layer 2 and the present NetBIOS as Kalitay & Nambiar, (2011) observes. However, newer protocols are designed to overcome these challenges.
References
Brodie, M. L., & Mylopoulos, J. (Eds.). (2012). On knowledge base management systems: integrating artificial intelligence and database technologies. Springer Science & Business Media.
Kalitay, H. K., & Nambiar, M. K. (2011, January). Designing wanem: A wide area network emulator tool. In Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), 2011 Third International Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.
Vicknair, C., Macias, M., Zhao, Z., Nan, X., Chen, Y., & Wilkins, D. (2010, April). A comparison of a graph database and a relational database: a data provenance perspective. In Proceedings of the 48th annual Southeast regional conference (p. 42). ACM.
