Download Saratoga National Corporation (SNC) is a wholesaler of silicon

Fall 2006
Tsai
MIS 150 – Database Management Systems for Business
Group Project
Saratoga Chip Corporation (SCC) is a wholesaler of silicon integrated circuits (ICs) that
are commonly found in all modern electronic equipment, especially computers and cell
phones. SCC buys ICs in large quantities from manufacturers, warehouses them, and
sells them, usually in smaller batches, to manufacturers of computers, cell phones, and
other electronic equipment.
When electronic equipment manufacturers cannot get supply by an IC manufacturer they
turn to company like SCC. SCC buys only the highest quality product at low prices at
times when nobody wanted it, and sold it again at high prices when the market was
clamoring for product. The firm is generally well regarded in electronic manufacturer
circles and located in Los Gatos, CA. Most of the firm’s building space is warehouse
space for storage of the integrated circuits.
SCC is owned by Nancy. She only has two employees, Russell who looks after the
warehouse and Gwen who looks after the office. Business at SCC is very simple in
principle. Nancy buys IC’s at one price and sells them at another price. However, it
requires special skill to know what and when to buy. An amateur might buy high quality
ICs at low prices only to discover later they had become obsolete and un-saleable. Nancy
rarely makes such mistake, although she expects it to happen once in a while. To avoid
making a fatal mistake, however, Nancy never puts a lot of her capital into any one
purchase. Thus if a deal does go sour, only a small fraction of her working capital is lost.
Nancy spends most of her day on the telephone, talking to sales managers at the IC
manufacturers, purchasing manager at electronic equipment manufacturers, and her other
important contacts throughout the industry. This keeps her on top of trends in the
business.
Before placing an order to buy ICs, Nancy will have carried out extensive negotiations
with the sales people at the IC manufacturer. When details of price, quantity, quality,
reliability, deliver, and price have been worked out, Nancy hands the process of issuing a
purchase requisition over to Gwen. The supplier of the parts looks after delivery. On
arrival the parts are given a careful visual inspection by Russell. If there is a problem,
Russell reports to Gwen, who notifies the supplier of refusal to accept the goods.
Similarly, before the equipment manufacturer places an order with Nancy for parts,
extensive negotiations take place on the telephone. The purchase order from the
equipment manufacturer arrives by mail and is handled by Gwen. Nancy does not pay
for shipment. She does not want the responsibility for the parts once they leave SCC.
The purchaser is required to provide and pay for shipment. This also helps Nancy
maintain quality. Furthermore, it simplifies her business.
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Both purchases and sales are on credit. The unpaid bills of suppliers are called accounts
payable. The unpaid bills of customers are called accounts receivable. Nancy manages
her cash very carefully, and never pays a bill before she has to. Funds are kept in an
account at the Bank of Sacramento. It should be clear that SCC, despite its small size, is
in a very strong financial position.
Although Nancy’s business is clearly successful and quite profitable, the management
part is a hectic affair for Nancy. Suppose that a customer has phoned asking for 700 of
these parts. Nancy would immediately ask Gwen to check the status about how many
3333 are in the stock. Nancy would tell the customer to go ahead and submit the order if
there are enough quantity on hand. Gwen would keep a note of this expected order in a
manual Pending Sales Invoice file.
Suppose a few days later a second customer asks for 600 of type 3333 ICs. The first
customer has not yet submitted an order for the 700 parts, so that there are still 1,000 of
the 3333’s in stock. As usual, Nancy asks Gwen about how many parts are in the stock.
Gwen checks the inventory file and obtains the number 1,000, but also checks the
Pending Sales Invoice file. Gwen would inform Nancy that SCC is also expecting an
order for 700 from the first customer. Thus there are not enough 3333 parts in stock, and
the order has to be refused.
Nancy then starts phoning a number of suppliers to see what kind of price she will have
to pay for a new supply of 3333 devices. If she judges the cost is too high, she will
simply not order. When Nancy does ask Gwen to issue a purchase order for parts, she
makes a note of this in a Pending Purchase Order file.
All this is very time consuming, and Gwen is more than busy, issuing purchase orders,
invoices, packing slips, retrieving information for Nancy, and keeping the books.
Although Nancy likes to keep thing simple and has come to the conclusion that a
computer system for routine chores would be a great help. She visualizes a computer
screen in front of her when customer calls, so that she can get the complete picture for
any individual type of part—how many are in stock, what they cost, how many are
committed to sales, how many are on order, and so on. Nancy figures that the computer
system might just allow her to accept sales orders from customers for parts that are not in
stock but are on order. With only a manual system Nancy feels that accepting such sales
order is far too risky now.
An additional benefit of a computer system would be to provide instant up-to-date
displays of sales trends in any type of IC, as well as trends in prices paid and prices
obtained. This would help Nancy make better purchasing decisions and better pricing
decisions on sales. The sales trends versus quantity in stock would also give her a better
control on when and what to reorder.
Nancy has hired your team from MIS150 Consulting, Inc., of Sacramento to design a
basic database system to handle the routine accounting and operational data for her firm.
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The proposed data base and associated manipulation system should relieve Gwen from an
increasingly intolerable burden and, at the same time, provide Nancy with management
information for making tactical decision.
The assignment requirements:
1.
Entity relationship model
a. Entity relationship diagram (only one to many relationship)
2.
Relational model
a. Corrected entity relationship diagram (only one to many relationship)
b. Normalized relations (relation name, attributes, primary key, and foreign
key(s))
c. Constraints (entity, referential, domain, and enterprise)
d. Underline the primary key and double underline the foreign key(s) in each
relation
3.
SQL (Oracle 8i)
a. Corrected entity relationship diagram (only one to many relationship)
b. Corrected and Normalized relations (relation name, attributes, primary key,
and foreign key(s))
c. Constraints (entity, referential, domain, and enterprise)
d. Underline the primary key and double underline the foreign key(s) in each
relation
e. SQL statements and reports (both hard copy and soft copy)
f. SQL Database (state the username and password)
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