Reference no: EM134332

Assignment 1: Using a Database for Strategic Business Development

Background:

Relational databases are not new technology. Commercially, they gained importance in the early 1980s with the introduction of Oracle's relational database, and since then they have been an necessary tool for most businesses. Databases are critical tools that assist to support various business functions in an organization. These information systems assist a business to build and maintain competitive advantage. Databases not only support the operational levels of business-they are also used to support the activities of managers.

For this assignment, you may be analyzing the data in a simple, one-table database by creating queries and reports in Microsoft Access. The system you are "developing" may be used by The Queen's Inn in St. John's, Newfoundland for strategic business development purposes.

Remember that Access, Excel, and even FrontPage, are all tools. This assignment will assist you discover how to use a database tool to support a business. You may be analyzing the data in the database and answering the questions in the exercise to create the queries and reports that are necessary to evaluate what the Inn's current business situation is.

Instructions:

•  
  • Opened the file, click FILE→ SAVE AS→, then SAVE the file to your hard drive according to the following assignment naming standards:
    
    yourlastname_CMIS351_assign1.mdb
    
    OR
    
    yourlastname_CMIS351_assign1.accdb (depending on the file format default of your version of Access)
    
    Once the file has been saved, you can open it and start working on your assignment.
  • Analyze the data in the database and in the application exercise.
  • To do this assignment, you will need to do data calculations. Remember to follow good database practice here by not saving your calculations as part of the data table itself.
  • Create reports and queries that will provide information to help management at the Queen's Inn to be more competitive and profitable. If you look at the original database you downloaded, you will see that it provides suggestions for the three reports that should be created for The Queen's Inn. These empty templates will give you an indication of what queries and reports you must create for this assignment.

• Write a brief report describing what database information would make the business more competitive and profitable.

Assignment 2: Achieving Operational Excellence - Building a Relational Database for Inventory Management

Background:

Sylvester's Bike Shop has stored its data in Excel for many years but has experienced some data quality issues. As you can see from the Excel file for this assignment, Sylvester's Excel spreadsheet stores the company's products and suppliers. Some of the data quality issues Sylvester's has experienced are errors in supplier names and addresses that have resulted from these being repeated several times in the data. Changes to supplier addresses are not always made consistently. 

As well, Sylvester's is planning to grow its product line dramatically over the next year and therefore feels that they should position themselves for this growth by moving to Access.  One of the things they would like to be able to do is move to "Category Management," in which one category manager is assigned to each product category and is responsible for managing that category to achieve specific performance goals. Initially, all they are interested in adding to the database is a way to add the salesperson name for each product category.

The first step in your assignment is to design and build an Access database to house Sylvester's current data.

As is always required in these kinds of projects, you will need to correct any data problems you find. Wherever there is inconsistent data, you should change the incorrect value to the one that is on the rest of the records for that supplier.

Since you have not been given the Category Manager names, you can make these up for your database. The customer will have to update these once you give them the final database structure, so make sure that your database design makes this easy for them to do.

Keep in mind as well that you do not want to retype all of this data. First, doing so will not be the best use of your time (and will be quite boring); second, it can introduce inadvertant data errors when the new data is entered. You need to make sure that the data in the Access databases matches the Excel data (except for the obvious data inconsistencies).  You can import the data directly from an Excel spreadsheet. 

The next step is to create queries and reports for each of the three reports requested on page 199 of the textbook.  As well, you should create a query and a report that lists each product category with their salesperson and the products which they manage. This report should be sorted alphabetically by product category.  Products in each category should be sorted by descending price.

Assignment 3: Evaluating E-commerce Hosting Services

Instructions:

This assignment allows you to investigate two important information system trends. First, you will investigate what is necessary to open an Internet business. Second, you will be introduced to cloud computing, in the form of Web page hosting.

To submit the complete assignment, you must:

• create a spreadsheet to compare the three identified e-commerce hosting sites and the e-commerce hosting site that you find. Ensure that your comparison includes (1) evaluation criteria based on customer requirements and other factors you deem to be important and (2) the raw data and an assessment for each hosting site for each evaluation criterion.  For instance, you may include as a criterion "Storage" and find one web host offers 10 GB.  The raw data is 10 GB; an assessment might be "H", "M" or "L" OR a number from 1 (low) to 5 (high) or other evaluation that you choose.

• prepare a PowerPoint presentation that represents the presentation you would give to management explaining your selection. It should explain all the criteria that you included in your evaluation, the strengths and weaknesses of each hosting alternative; it should also identify your choice and the reasons why you made this choice. For each slide, include "notes" that represent what you would say if you were giving the presentation.

Assignment 4: Improving Decision Making: Using Pivot Tables to Analyze Sales Data

Instructions:

This assignment gives you an opportunity to practice the use of pivot tables as described in Chapter. These are particularly important for managers because they provide easily accessible, business intelligence tools right at the manager's desk

To submit the complete assignment, you must:

• download  Online Management Training Inc.'s data.
• create PivotTables to help you answer the questions on page 398.
• create one additional PivotTable to answer a question of your choosing.
• create a report to management explaining your analysis and its implications.

Assignment 5: Using Database Software to Design a Customer System for Auto Sales

Instructions:

This assignment builds on your first two Access assignments and asks you to consider the process of designing and implementing a database system solution.

The first step in this assignment is to create a systems analysis report as outlined on page 434 of the textbook. This is a critical step in the systems development process as it helps you to define the requirements for the work you will go on to do. Add a section called  "Project Management Considerations" to this report; in this section, explain the project management considerations that the organization must take into account if they go ahead with this project.

You do NOT have to create any data input forms for this assignment. You do NOT have to consider whether or not to use Ace's existing customer database.

The next step in the assignment is to create the database suggested in your report.  Note that one of the requirements here is that it must align with the report you have created - that is, it satisfies all of the requirements noted, but only the requirements noted.

After the database is created, populate each table with at least ten records.

If you do not have access to a computer on which you can install Microsoft Access, you may use another database tool. If you do this, you must also submit the following:

• an E-R diagram of your database that clearly shows the primary and foreign keys for each table.
• a screen shot of the first page of the contents of each table. Alternatively, you may create a report that dumps the contents of a table and submit a single page of that report.
• queries that you designed to create each report. Show both the query design and the query output.
• the reports required in the assignment