Question 650:

Asked on March 9, 2009

1

Answer:

No answer provided yet.

Part A:

A single database has the advantage of reducing data-redundancy as all the information regarding the sales and distribution of the ice-cream will be in one location. With a single instance of the data, changes can be made and cascaded for all applications. Additionally, a single data source allows for easier data-mining and analytics to run reports on (e.g, sales reports, customer figures etc). A single database will save costs since it will require one less enterprise database licenses to purchase and pay annual maintenance on. There will also not be a need to maintain the salaries of DBA's, programmers and other technical staff to maintain both databases.

Part B:

Part of maintaining data integrity with a database is being sure correct entries are maintained (that is, not allowing multiple values when only single values are allowed by the business case). Since there is a 1:Many relationship with the distribution company, the DBAs will either need to merge the two tables into one comparable 1 to many table or maintain two tables.

Part C:

The likely structure would be a 1:Many table since you can convert a 1:1 relationship into a 1:Many (there is just 1 entry for certain sales reps). The likely implementation would be adding an additional field (e.g  Company Source) which allows for both sets of data to be merged. The table structure would allow for data integrity checks by only allowing multiple entries if the company source field indicates the sales reps come from the distribution company and not allowing multiple territories for the ice cream company.