INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE DESIGN- Please read excerpt below and answer the follow

Question

INTRODUCTION TO DATABASE DESIGN-

Please read excerpt below and answer the following 4 questions please, I am needing to write an essay with answers to these four questions.

A custom bakery has four shops in St. Louis. They take walk-in and phone orders. Phone orders are taken at the downtown location and passed on to the location nearest the customer. Most custom orders are for delivery rather than pick-up. They want to be able to take orders over the Internet within 6 months.

Each shop is configured with its own LAN. The shops are connected through the Internet with a secure, full-time, high-bandwidth connection. Each location connects to the Internet through a firewall. The network administrator, who also handles user support for the bakery, works out of the downtown shop. Because the downtown shop is the main location, it tends to have the most computer problems. They have college students working as part-time technicians at the other shops to assist with fixing minor problems, but they have limited experience or expertise.

The bakery wants to start using a database to track store records. The first phase will be putting customer, inventory, accounting, and other store records in the database. Data is currently stored in Microsoft Access databases and Excel spreadsheets. During the second phase, they plan to post pictures of custom projects for advertising purposes and as suggestions for customers. Queries retrieving these pictures need to be optimized.

The database design calls for queries of outstanding customer orders made to the remote shops to return orders assigned to that shop only. The same applies to queries of supplies and equipment. You should be able to run queries from the downtown location to return information related either to just that location or to the business as a whole.

Database management will be handled in-house. All of the application programming is being contracted out. Someone will be hired to manage the Web site before it goes live. You want to keep expenses related to the project to a minimum. Hardware resource requirements should be minimized on any computers purchased to support the solution. You also want to minimize the management overhead required by the solution.

Note: *PLEASE ANSWER THESE: AND ELABORATE (EXPLAIN) YOUR ANSWER

1.   Describe the type of data environment you would use and why.

2.   What, if any, replication requirements are needed to support the design? Explain your answer.

3.   Describe two table design options for meeting the query requirements described. Include any additional database objects required by the solution. Explain how to keep access simple for the queries.

4    The Web server should not connect directly to the database server. What components will be required to deploy the Web site and to protect the database server from unauthorized access from the Internet?

Explanation / Answer

1. A data environment is something being used to collect, manage and share information among the members of a team, while working on a project. It can be of different types depending on the requirements, size and geographical limitations of the project. For ex. client-server architecture, n-tier environment, intranet, extranet or cloud-based environment. However whatever be the type, objective is to have a collaborative and well-managed environment for project management.

Mentioned project talks about in-house database management, out-sourced application development and contarcted website management. This indicates scattering of project work over different geographical locations instead of project work being confined to a single premises. For such a scenario either cloud-based (private or public) or internet technology based environment (extranet) can be feasible. However, using a cloud-based system may have overheads belonging to infrastructure, cost etc. As client intends to keep costs to a minimum, hence using extranet will be a more cost-effective option. It is not clarified that client intends continue using existing MS-Access databases. If so, then he may inclined to use Microsoft technologies for the project. But this may create cost overhead. So, alternatively, FOSS-based LAMP environment can be good option to consider.

2. Replication refers to activity of regulary copy of data from one database in one computer/server to another so that same data is available to all users. In the described scenario, most of the operations are performed and controlled at downtown location working as de-facto HQ of the bakery. It is obvious that backbone of the project - database server, application server etc. will be hosted at the same location. Remote locations og bakery needn't have their own local copies of database. Hence, replication requirements of proposed project will be minimal like provision of backup and ability to recover from a sudden failure. However, it is recommended to indentify all possioble replication requirements and incorporate them into design from beginning itself.

3. In my view, table design for the proposed project should be based indentification of all possible entities like customer, seller (bakery inself) and their corresponding assotiations. Accordingly sufficient tables (masters as well as transaction tables) should be defined. These table should be referenced with proper keys(primary-foreign key relationship). Other database objects like views, reports etc. can also be created as per requirement. To make access simple to queries, it would be essential to define necessary reports corresponding to queries and make necessary provisions to access those reports in the user interface itself.

4. For website deployment: Configuring the web server for hosting the website. Setting up an application server to work as a middleware for security and state maintenance, along with data access and persistence.

Protecting database server: Host database server in a tursted environment separate from public access zone and establish a firewall in between (web server and database server).

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