Question

A bank has its head office in Stoke. It has two branches, one in Longton and other in Burslem. Each customer account belongs to 1 branch only. At present, company has 1 database located in the head office. Customers at branches entrance this database via a message network for whatever they need.

One of the relations in this centralised database system is Account relation, where data about accounts is kept. The attributes of Account relation are- the account number (Acc no), account type (Acc type), the customer's identification (assume Name), the branch where account is held, the current balance for the account (balance) and an indicator that tells head office if the publicity (information on updates to regulations, interest rates etc) for a account type for a customer has been sent out. An example of account relation is given below-

Acc No Acc Type Name Branch Balance Publicity
191688 002 Jones Burslem 2000 yes
779865 005 Smith Longton 600 no
158756 002 Green Longton 8 yes
125467 007 White Longton 10000 no
124678 005 Black Burslem 150 yes

The bank has determined to move to a distributed database system where each of sites has its own database. Suggest a fragmentation design of the Account relation that reflects the distribution of the company's sites and their functionality. Validate your proposal.