Distributed DBMS Case Study 1

Case Study 1:
Gold Finch Mail Order Company
The Gold Finch Mail Order Company, established in 1938,
maintains a mailing list of approximately 50,000 addresses to
which it sends fall catalogs. It receives about 30,000 orders a
year, with one-third of them arriving in November and
December. Located in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, Gold Finch
maintains a relational database containing the tables below.
This database is used for numerous applications, including
catalog distribution, order entry, order shipment, and
inventory. Because all orders are prepaid, Gold Finch does not
have any accounts receivable tables in its database.

Customer (CustomerID,CustomerName,StreetAddress,City,State,ZipCode)
Item (ItemID,ItemName,Description,QuantityOnHand,CatalogPrice)
Order (CustomerID,InvoiceNo,InvoiceTotal)
InvoiceItem (InvoiceNo,ItemId,NumberOrdered,TotalCostOfNumberOrdered)
 Case Study 1:
Red Robin Mail Order Company
The Red Robin Mail Order Company, located in Freesprite,
Arizona, has been in the mail newspaper supplements in major
metropolitan areas, and receives approximately 130,000
orders a year, half of which arrive in April and May, the other
half which arrive more or less evenly during remaining months.
The Red Robin Company maintains several files, including
those below that are used for catalog distribution, order entry,
order shipment, and inventory in addition to numerous other
applications. Like Gold Finch, Red Robin maintains no accounts
receivable files.

Customer (Customer,Address,City,State,ZipCode)
Order (Customer,InvoiceTotal, NumberOfItems, the repeating group:
(ItemId,ItemCost,NumberOrdered))
Item (ItemId,QuantityOnHand,CatalogPrice)
Case Study 1
Last year, the Red Robin Mail Order Company bought Gold
Finch. It plans to maintain separate operations in Arizona and
Minnesota, but wishes to combine order entry operations and
move them to New York. Customers will call a toll-free number
to place orders. Telephone operators need on-line access to
inventory information for both Arizona and Minnesota so they
can inform customers about the availability of products. The
operators generate shipping invoices, which are electronically
transferred to Minnesota and/or Arizona where the orders are
filled and shipped within four hours. Customers give operators
their credit card numbers and are billed via their credit card
billing statements. Because of the large investment in current
applications, the current DBMS in Minnesota and the current
file system in Arizona will be retained.

You have been hired as a consultant to design a distributed

DBMS that supports the operations in Arizona and Minnesota,
as well as the new order entry function in New York City.

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
1. Which of the following capabilities do the order
entry operators in New York need?

Needed Not Needed

Up-to-date results
Atomicity of transactions involving multiple sites
Coordinated backup and recovery
Data location and replication transparency
Automatic data translation
Automatic data merging

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
2. What data sharing architecture do you
recommend?

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
3. Design the external schemas for use in
Arizona, Minnesota, and New York.

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
4. What are the principle characteristics of
the distributed execution manager?
a. No update, single-site update, or multisite
update?
b. What form of distributed concurrency control
is needed?
c. What type of commit protocols are needed?

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
5. Define mappings between external
schemas and existing databases.

More…
Case Study 1, cont.
6. What other advice would you give the
Red Robin Company?