Argoel

Richard Perez

MGMT - 340

Chapter 7-Problems/Exercises, Questions 5, 16, and 17

5. Consider the E-R diagram in Figure 7-20. Based on this E-R diagram, answer the following questions:

a) How many EMPLOYEES can work on a project?

There is no limit as to how many employees can work on a project, therefore there is no limit or amount.

b) What is the degree of the Used_on relationship?

Given that there are two degrees for the relationship this would be considered a binary degree.

c) Do any associative entities appear in this diagram? If so, name them.

The associative entity TASK appears in this diagram.

d) How else could the attribute Skill be modeled?

The attribute Skill may be shown coming off of Task as another blue square, and you could even attach Skill back to Task.

e) What attributes might be attached to the Works_on relationship?

Some attributes you could include could be the jobs and the requirements needed for completion, also any position in the project itself.

f) Could TOOL be modeled as an associative entity? Why or why not?

Tool could not be modeled as an associative entity because it can be used for many other tasks, and depending on the task you could use more or less tools as well as different ones.

16. The owner of two pizza parlors located in adjacent towns wants to computerize and integrate sales transactions and inventory management within and between both stores. The point-of-sale component must be easy to use and flexible enough to accommodate a variety of pricing strategies and coupons. The inventory management, which will be linked to the point-of-sale component, must also be easy to use and fast. The systems at each store need to be linked so that sales and inventory levels can be determined instantly for each store and for both stores combined. The owner can allocate $40,000 for hardware and $20,000 for software and must have the new system operational in three months. Training must be short and easy. Briefly describe three alternative systems for this situation and explain how each would meet the requirements and constraints. Are the requirements and constraints realistic? Why or why not?

For Alternative A, you would forfeit any “off-the-shelf” products, simply because the software may not provided all necessary requirements to run and operate the business. In order to get exactly what you want or at least have bare minimum requirements the budget may need to be a little higher for both software and hardware. If you pick Alternative B, you would get all your customizations, be within your designated budget, and finally original time frame is accomplished within the project.

17. Compare the alternative systems from Problem and Exercise 16 using the weighted approach demonstrated in Figure 7-19. Which system would you recommend? Why? Was the approach taken in this and Problem and Exercise 16 useful even for this relatively small system? Why or why not?

Systems analysis involves determining as well as structuring requirements. Once the system requirements have been completely structured following the flow and data process, the users and analyst come together to package these same requirements into different system configurations. Shaping alternative system design strategies involves the following processes:

· Dividing requirements into different sets of capabilities. This typically ranges from the bare minimum that users would accept to conduct their work (the required features/components) to the most elaborate and advanced system the company fit into the budget to develop (which includes all the features desired by all users). Alternatively, different sets of capabilities could result in the position of different organizational units with conflicting expectations concerning what the system should be doing.

· Enumerating different potential implementation environments (hardware, system software, and network platforms) in which can be used to provide different sets of capabilities. (The decisions in the implementation environment could result in technical limitations on the subsequent design phase activities.)

· To propose a variety of ways to source or secure the various sets of capabilities for all of the implementation environments.