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Your
industrial supply company wants to create a data warehouse where
management can obtain a single corporate-wide view of critical sales
information to identify best-selling products in specific geographic
areas, key customers, and sales trends. Your sales and product
information are stored in several different systems: a divisional
sales system running on a UNIX server and a corporate sales system
running on an IBM mainframe. You would like to create a single
standard format that consolidates these data from both systems. The
following format has been proposed.
Prod_No |
Product_ Description |
Cost_per_ Unit |
Units_ Sold |
Sales_Region |
Division |
Customer_ID |
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The following are sample files from the two systems that would
supply the data for the data warehouse:
Mechanical Parts Division Sales System
Prod_No |
Product_ Description |
Cost_per_Unit |
Units_Sold |
Sales_Region |
Customer_ID |
60231 |
4"
Steel bearing |
5.28 |
900,245 |
N.E. |
Anderson |
85773 |
SS
assembly unit |
12.45 |
992,111 |
M.W. |
Kelly
Industries |
Corporate Sales System
Product_ID |
Product_ Description |
Unit_Cost |
Units_Sold |
Sales_Territory |
Division |
60231 |
Bearing,
4" |
5.28 |
900,245 |
Northeast |
Parts |
85773 |
SS
assembly unit |
12.02 |
992,111 |
Midwest |
Parts |
- What business problems are created by not having these data in
a single standard format?
- How easy would it be to create a database with a single
standard format that could store the data from both systems?
Identify the problems that would have to be addressed.
- Should the problems be solved by database specialists or
general business managers? Explain.
- Who should have the authority to finalize a single
company-wide format for this information in the data warehouse?
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