case on dbms
TRANSCRIPT
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Data Base Management Systeman Introduction and history
Our study case: Hotel Bincker's
In the last few years Hotel Bincker's has grown from a small village hostel into amedium sized business hotel in a rapidly growing small silicon village town. And
the desk has no time to keep track of all information needed to take care of its
guests in a proper way. "We are a hotel not an airline!" is vaguely muttered by
the manager after he lost your name again, did not cross off the room on his
blackboard and booked the same room twice.
But after management communicated its concern with losing clients, the manager
promises to clean up his act.
Some weeks later when you show up at Hotel Bincker's desk the manager will
finger through his agenda which is ordered by date and he will find your
reservation. This method works well for a small hotel. Guests are coming back
and the hotel's business is profitable again.
H otel Bincker''s agenda and room reservation "database"
But after some years, Hotel Bincker's has grown again. Now it is a larger hotel
with some 100 rooms and the manager is still using an agenda for each floor, and
then history repeats: your name is lost. The manager needs many minutes to find
what room is available. It is obvious that any (paper) agenda would be too small
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alphabetically, so you can quickly find what you are looking for. These examples are
already a small database, see? But remember a database can have any physical
form: paper, on a blackboard, an electronic file, or even some tally sticks . (a very early
form of some kind of registration in 1310)
tally sticks
The lists we have here can be put on a computer in a word processor document orsome tabular sheet like a spreadsheet. These are called files. It is possible to
combine those two in any way, already a sort of database. The difference between
a database and a file is that there is something extra to it. A database must
contain a method, amongst other things, to look up something. Comparable to
the databases used by search engines like Google, Alta Vista, or Yahoo that we
use to find companies which could sell us a reservation system. The Internet is
also some kind of database. And all this information is managed by a database
management system, hence DBMS.
Case study: Hotel Bincker
³Our biggest problem is to find rooms that are vacant and the ones that are
occupied,´ says Lisa. Below I have drawn an example listing for vacancies that
can be called with one click of a button:
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Here is part of the rooms list with guests who reserved a room for the 20th of
December
Here is part of the rooms list with guests who reserved a room for the 20th of
December
Name First Address Notes Phone Gender Pet Vegetarian Smoker
Dijkstra Jan 14
Pinkerton
lane
Deloit,
1234DE
Delaware
USA
Yes 31 44
345
3666
M Y N
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Whe
n
our
desk
man
ager
want
s to
have a quick view when a room becomes available, or for that matter occupied
rooms, he calls up his agenda in the form of a chart:
This chart is color coded, blue is a guest, green is available, purple are
reservations, yellow is a national holiday or other special day; mostly meaning
prices go up. When our front desk manager wants more specifics he can open a
sub window to search for a room (in all pos sible combinations: adjacent rooms,
Romero Paolo Plz de 5
Mayo 123
4325-23
Roma
Italy
No 123
4523
3509
M Pietro N N
Rubnes Jetro 123 Pole23
Deliver to
mailoffice
San
Remaro
Trinidad
Yes 1014403
2226
M Vlato N N
Voloute Maria 12 rue de
la liberte
Auxerre
120394
France
No 404
2396
2350
F N Y
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smoke free, etc.)
Or use the more advanced form of a floor plan:
Our front desk manager will have an instant overview of all available rooms and
their configuration.
³That,´ concludes Lisa, ³is all we need.´ Not a complicated system like the Hilton
has, but one that offers you the information you need with one click of a button.
And one where we can put in the information we have on our guests habits and
likes or dislikes.
³So,´ asks her dad, ³how would we go ahead? What do we need? A scientist? It
must be a system that we can maintain by ourselves with no need for expensive
consultants with little knowledge of our business.´
And Lisa answers: ³You know, dad; we just happen to have an assignment in our
class that just covers your need.´
Instantly a broad grin plays on Dad¶s lips. ³OK,´ he says, ³let's see if we can be of
mutual benefit to each other.´
So now you have some idea of how most automation projects start: from a
certain need and/or a fear of losing business.
Continue to the next chapter where I will introduce some methods and techniques
used to analyze information.