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Database Administrator for Department Store
Scenario
The department store has expanded in the local region by opening five more bookstores, and the bookstore has launched a series of marketing campaign to increase sales and attract new customers. The objective of this technical report is to develop a plan to create and maintain an enterprise-wide database system that will assist the bookstore to hold the inventory and sales data. The database design will assist the organization to support the new marketing strategy, and align with the product initiatives.
Identification of the Potential Departmental and Sales Transaction to be Store within the Database
In the United States, the enterprise-wide relational database is very critical for the retail bookstore envisaging increasing sales within the contemporary business environment. To design a database to support the accuracy of the business information for the departmental store, there is a need to identify the potential sales transaction. This identification will avoid the redundant data within the enterprise relational database. The principal entities involved in the departmental and sales transactions for the bookstore are as follows:
Customers- They are the people who buy the product from the bookstore. The main attributes for customer's identifications are name, identification number, and address.
Customer History- attributes to identify customer's history are date of delivery, history identification number, and quantity delivered.
Publishers -- These companies supply book stocks to the stores. Main attributes are name, publisher identification number, address, and contact number.
Book- These are the product supplied to the bookstore and which are available for purchase. Main attributes are the ISBN, author, title, and price, amount in the inventory, subject area, and year of publication.
Store -- This is the location or actual premises where the transaction takes place.
Employees -- staff who work in the store and deal with the customers.
Transaction: Process of buying and selling of book product. Main attributes for identification are transaction number, number of books bought and sold, and the amount of money involved in the transaction.
All these makes up of the entities in the database design, and each entity has attributes allotted to them. The table below reveals the attributes for each entity.
Entity
Attribute
Customer
Customer ID
First Name
Last Name
Address
APT
City
Zip
Email
Book
Book ID
Book Number
ISBN
Publication Date
Publisher Name
Type
Price
Quantity
Employee
Employee ID
First Name
Last Name
Address
APT
City
Zip
Email
Hire Date
Term Date
Term Note
Book Author
Author ID
First Name
Last Name
Address
APT
City
Zip
Email
Date of Birth
Order Transaction
Price
Quantity
Total Price
Ship Date
Ship Type
Customer ID
Employee ID
Book ID
Sales
Products
Customer
Employee
Store
Store
Store Name
Address
Publisher
Publisher ID
Address
APT
City
Zip
Email
Web Address
All these attributes provide the information for the successful transactions in the departmental bookstore. The next step is to present the business rules associated with the business transactions as well the storage in the database. Bookstore transaction is similar to the business transaction; however, the department store will organize and store data to facilitate easy transaction.
2. Database Solution and Business Rules for the Sales Transaction
A business rule is a statement that imposes a form of constraint on an aspect of database. The business rules assist the organization to conduct business transactions effectively, and businesses rules provide business solutions for the database. The business rules are important for the database because they provide important method of data modification as well as the method data are created and deleted. The rules assist in determining the structure of the database. The proposed database provides the following business rules for the database design:
Rule 1:
When a customer order a book from the bookstore, the following business process must take place:
An order received from a customer.
An employee checks the inventory for product availability,
Employee confirms the customer's order,
The employees contacts warehouse,
The bookstore ships the product and invoice to the customer.
Rule 2
Department store has 5 stores that sell many books, and this is translated into a field constraint within the dataset. The designated code is also assigned to each store location.In the field, the assigned codes are valid.
Rule 3
A customer is allowed to generate many invoices,
Each invoice could be generated by one customer,
An invoice should contain one or more line, and each line associates with one invoice,
Publisher is allowed to supply many books,
Rule 4:
Each vendor is allowed to supply at least one product. This is represented by the relationship constraint within the database.
3. Evaluation of all Relationships of Each Entity within the Database
With the identification of the business rules needed to design the database, the next step is to work out the relationship among the entities:
Customer
Book
Employee
Book Author
Order Transaction
Stores
Publisher
The report defines the relationship between entities because each entity will have a relationship with other entity in the database. The next section arrives at the accurate relationship of the entities revealing 35 relationships where each entity has 5 relationships.
1. Customers ( Sales: 1 customer can buy books as many times as he wishes.
2. Sales ( Customers: 1 or more sale is made from customer
3. Customers ( Book: 1 customer can purchase multiple books
4. Books (Customers: 1 book can be purchased by multiple customers
5. Customers ( Stores: 1 customer can purchase a book from multiple shops
6. Stores ( Customers: 1 store can provide services to multiple customers
7. Stores ( Books: 1 store can sell books to multiple customer
8. Books ( Stores: 1 books can be sold in multiple stores
9. Stores ( Sales: 1 store can make multiple sales
10. Sales ( Stores: 1 store can make 1 sale at the same time
11. Books ( Sales: 1 book can be purchased in multiple sales
12. Sales ( Books: 1 sale can be made out of multiple times
13. Customers ( Employees: 1 customer can only be served by 1 customer
14. Employees ( Customers: 1 employee can serve only 1 customer
15. Stores ( Employees: 1 store can occupy multiple employees
16. Employees ( Stores: 1 employee can serve in multiple stores
17. Publisher ( Customers: 1 publisher may be requested by multiple customers
18. Customers ( Publisher: 1 customer can request multiple publishers
19. Books ( Publisher: 1 book may be supplied by 1 publisher
20. Publisher ( Books: 1 publisher can supply multiple books
21. Sales ( Publishers: 1 sale can be made from multiple publishers
22. Publishers ( Sales: 1 publisher can supply multiple sales
23. Stores ( Publishers: 1 store can provide stock to multiple publishers
24. Publisher ( Stores: 1 publisher can supply stocks to multiple stores
25. Employees ( Publisher: 1 employee can serve multiple publishers
26. Publisher ( Employees: 1 publisher can be occupied by multiple employees
27. Employee ( Sales: 1 employee can make 1 sale
28. Employee ( Sales: 1 employee can make multiple sales
29. Books ( Employees: 1 book can be sold by multiple employees
30. Employees ( Books: 1 employee can sell multiple books.
31. Employee --> Book Author: 1 employee can order from 1 book author.
32. Book Author. --> Employees: 1 book author can supply book to many employees
33. Store --> Order Transaction: 1 store can make multiple order transactions.
34. Order Transaction -->Store: 1 order transaction can occur in one store.
35. Employee --> order Transaction: 1 employee can be in charge of 1 order transaction at a time.
Overview of all the relationships reveals that there are 35 relationships based on 7 entities multiply by 5 relationships. The next step is to provide the cardinality of each relationship and the annotated diagram of each relationship. Each cardinality relationship takes the following form:
One-to-One (1:1)
One-to-many (1: M)
Many-to-Many (M:N)
Many-to-One (M: 1)
Customers --> Sales; --> 1: N
Customers --> Books; --> M: N
Customers --> Stores; --> M: N
Sales --> Books; --> M: N
Stores --> Sales; --> 1: N
Stores --> Books; --> M: N
These relationships are shown in the Entity-Relation Diagram in the Fig 1.
Fig 1: Entity-Relation Diagram for the Department Store
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