Part 1

An analysis of the existing material used by a company for their day-to-day duties, the current Access database, and the additional requirements that the current system does not meet, the following requirements entity/attributes have been compiled:

• Customer information is tracked using 'standard' attributes.
• A customer may purchase products or services; if they purchase products or services, the following is tracked:
  • Product purchased
  • Date of purchase
  • Total of purchase
• A supplier may sell products or services; if they sold products or services, the following is tracked:
  • Product sold
  • Date of sale
  • Total of sale
  • Is item purchased available for resale
• Your company wants to keep the number of tables storing address information to a bare minimum (read this as 1).
• Customers can be both a "supplier" and "someone that purchased services," and it is not required that they be either.
• Employee information is tracked using standard attributes.
• An employee will either be considered customer interfacing or internal support.
• If the employee is customer facing, the following information is tracked:
  • Customer for interaction (note that a customer will only interface with a single employee)
  • Product specialty
  • Hours of training
  • Commission rate
• If the employee is internal support, then the following is tracked:
  • Salary
  • Support area
• An employee can be either customer facing or internal support, but not both.
• Your company wants to keep the number of tables storing generic employee information to a bare minimum (read this as 1).
• Finally, the company wants to track products or services offered. This should be a single table with typical attributes that describe inventory.
• Every customer that either makes a purchase or sells goods to the company must be associated with an employee.
• Every transaction that a customer makes with the company is stored/tracked, A customer may buy or sell many products, and a product is sold to more than one customer.

Create an enhanced ERD to meet these requirements. Ensure that entities are properly defined and appropriate attributes are listed for each entity. Also, ensure that all entities are properly related.

Add your ERD as a screenshot to a Word document, and provide supporting discussion about the need for the enhanced diagram tools and the reasoning behind the multiplicity for the relationships.

Part 2

Write 400-600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. Now that the ERD is created, and as you are working on the logical model, you need to choose an RDBMS for the final solution. Using the method for DBMS selection, analyze 3 different DBMS products available and make a determination about which product you will recommend to management for selection. (One of the databases to analyze must be MySQL).

Using the vendors' Web sites, determine a rating for the following features, and calculate a final score for each:

Based on your analysis, which database product will you recommend, and why?

As you are designing and developing the database, you think to the future and want to be able to grow the database as required, not only expanding the data model as needed, but also in the event that the company wants to open remote data centers and have replicated copies of the data. Describe distributed databases and how they might be used.

A summary of this section output to be developed is described below:

• A completed template for 3 different database products (1 of them being MySQL)
  • Comments must be supplied
• A recommendation for a DBMS, including a justification
• A description of distributed databases

Part 3

Analyze the table below and reorganize the table into Boyce-Codd Normal Form, at each step describing what is needed to move to the next Normal Form and why each step meets the Normal Form requirements.

• Show unnormalized table given and progression through the normal forms up to Boyce Codd in logical data models.
• Include explanation of how each normal form is met as you progress through the process of breaking down this unnormalized table to tables meeting Boyce Codd normal form.

In addition, transform your data model (your ERD created previous) into a logical model, to third normal form. Describe why each table is in third Normal Form. In your logical data model identify the primary keys in each table as bolded and underlined and each foreign key as italicized and underlined.

A summary of this section output to be developed is described below:

• Logical Data Model for the supplied table with a description of how it moved through UNF to 1NF to 2NF to 3NF and Boyce Codd.
• Logical Data Model for Part 2 with a description of how each table is in third normal form.