Assignment: Database Concepts and Programming

Project Details

Scenario

Exotic Cars Inc. (ECI) is a company specializing in sales and maintenance of the exotic (hence the name) cars. The cars that ECI sells come from multiple sources: some are shipped directly from the factories, other purchased from the private collectors, and yet some other cars are traded-in by the customers of ECI.ECI also provides a regular maintenance service of the exotic cars, such as engine tune-up, tire rotation, oil change, etc. You do not have to buy a car from ECI to use its maintenance service; consequently, some owners of the exotic cars purchased elsewhere also use ECI maintenance service.

ECI appreciates continuing business of its patrons; consequently, the company wants to maintain as much information about each valuable customer as it possibly can. As a result, ECI diligently records how much money each customer spends on buying cars (more than a half have purchased two cars and about third bought three or more), on maintenance service (how much customer spends overall, and per car), and whether or not a customer ever traded a car in.

Similarly, ECI maintains detailed data on all the dealers, companies, manufacturers, and other sources that provide the company with needed services, parts, or cars. ECI is not a "backward" organization, but things have been done there pretty much the same way since ECI was founded in 1966. Owners of ECI feel like it is about time not just to move forward, but "leapfrog" the competition. You have been hired by ECI to find a way of increasing the level of performance of ECI.

Organizational Structure of ECI

There are three operational locations of ECI; one in Washington, DC, second in Richmond, VA, and third in Virginia Beach, VA. Corporate headquarters located in Charlottesville, VA.

Every location has a general manager, which is responsible for authorizing/rejecting whatever requests area managers of that location may have. Normally, area managers only handle the issue relevant to their area, for example, sales/trade-in area has its own manager, body shop/repair shop has its own, and service area has its own area manager.

Every area manager is authorized to make financial decisions up to $10,000.00. If the amount exceeds the limit of an area manager, then general manager of that location must authorize it- the general manager has discretion of making financial decisions of up to $100,000.00. If the amount exceeds this number, a request is send to the headquarters, where it is approved or rejected by a VP of the area (e.g., service, sales, and repair); a VP of the area is authorized to make a financial decision of up to $250,000.00. If the request exceeds this amount, it must be addressed by the CEO of ECI.

Your goal is to develop a database that shall allow ECI to keep track of its business and provide the management with the following information regarding the performance of the business:

HR Management

- Complete information about ECI employees, especially salesmen and technicians

Inventory Management

- Complete information on the number and types of the cars currently kept in stock
- Complete information on the number and types of the cars obtained from each source (factory, private collector, trade-in, etc.)

Maintenance Service Management

- Complete information on the number and types of the cars that were serviced.
- Complete information on maintenance record of each serviced car (car information, type of problem, owner, mechanic who performed the maintenance, and cost of maintenance)

Customer Service Management

- Complete information on every customer including information regarding their:
- Total spending on cars
- Total spending on service maintenance

Accounting

- Complete information on spending of every customer
- Complete information regarding what was paid to each vendor
- Complete information regarding what was received by ECI from the sales of cars
- Complete information regarding what was received by ECI from the maintenance service

You are going to submit the Course Project over the following sequence of steps (a single deliverable per step):

1. Course Project: ERD
2. Course Project: Normalized Data Model
3. Course Project: SQL code used to create your DB Schema
4. Course Project: Contents of the DB Tables
5. Course Project: Forms
6. Course Project: Reports.