Database Application Development.

IT 655 Milestone One Guidelines and Rubric

Presentation for the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Overview: IT professionals are often tasked with optimizing, tuning, and resolving various errors associated with large commercial database systems. As the world becomes more and more focused on the collection and use of data for various purposes, there is a greater need for building database applications that serve numerous complex functions. The final assessment will provide a comprehensive overview of the concepts, techniques, and skills that you have acquired throughout the course. The ability to interface a database management system with other applications and even third-party services is a commonly performed task in this discipline. The scenario, presented below, provides a real-world situation in which such skills will need to be employed. Scenario: The County of Everstone is a large county in a densely populated state in the United States. This county has a total of 34 incorporated cities within its boundaries. Overall, the county has a population exceeding 4 million residents. The county employs a proprietary database management system that is responsible for the county’s property tax assessment, parcel, and payment information. In a recent initiative, the county has been highly promoting the use of its online property tax payment and lookup information to reduce mailed payments and in-office visits. The marketing campaign for online property tax payments and information lookup has been highly successful. However, the county’s database systems have not sufficiently handled the increased traffic. As such, the web application available to residents often experiences high amounts of latency, frequently locks up, or in many instances is unavailable. The board of directors has asked executive IT management to look into the issue and provide a prompt resolution to the matter. A review of the hardware and software systems that the database management systems employ reveals that these systems “should” be able to take the capacity and load. Therefore, the IT management has ruled out the hardware systems as being the issue. Upon further investigation, a lead database systems administrator preliminarily reports that the issue appears to stem not from the hardware, but rather from a need to provide performance tuning on the database. The database design seems to be the culprit, since this database systems administrator noted large quantities of duplicated data, poorly written database queries, and triggers. Furthermore, the chief information officer (CIO) has also directed the web programmers and web developers to look at the web application for potential issues. The web development team has reported that while no design or programming issues were found with the web application, the stored procedures (queries) that it runs from the database server take long periods of time to run and frequently lock up the web servers. They suspect the queries were not designed for efficiency, since they were created before more individuals started using the online property tax payment system. Prompt: Review the scenario and create a presentation for the CIO that addresses, in detail, the key issues pertaining to performance and database efficiency, while touching on recommendations for improvements. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed during your presentation:

I. Performance Tuning: Describe what potential types of tuning could be done to enhance database performance, and how you determined this from your analysis of the provided information.

II. Query Design: Explain the application of query design and how queries can be made more efficient, in general, according to industry best practices. Your discussion should specifically touch upon, at minimum, issues relating to joins, sub-queries, and sorting.

III. Data Duplication and Redundancy: Provide an explanation of potential database normalization and other techniques that can be utilized to reduce data duplication and redundancy within the scenario organization. Describe areas where database redundancy could be occurring. Be sure to identify potential techniques that would improve the database within the context of the problem.

IV. Multiple-User Access Issues and Errors: a) Describe various applicable methods that will resolve record concurrency errors and issues as they occur in the scenario. b) Describe methods that could be used to enhance multi-user access within the context of the commercial database used in the scenario. Be sure

to defend your reasoning for recommending these methods. Guidelines for Submission: This presentation should be approximately 5–6 slides, not including reference and title slides. All references should be in APA format. The format and tool used for your presentation must be approved by your instructor. It is recommended, however, that free tools with IT support be used, such as Jing, or more traditional tools such as PowerPoint (with accompanying presentation notes), since they will allow you to record yourself giving a presentation. Instructor Feedback: This activity uses an integrated rubric in Blackboard. Students can view instructor feedback in the Grade Center. For more information, review these instructions.

Critical Elements Proficient (100%) Needs Improvement (70%) Not Evident (0%) Value

Performance Tuning Describes types of tuning that would logically enhance database performance based on analysis of scenario information

Describes types of tuning, but types would not logically enhance database performance or types are not based on analysis of scenario information

Does not describe types of performance tuning

19

Query Design Explains the application of query designs and how queries can be made more efficient according to industry best practices

Explains the application of query designs and how queries can be made more efficient, but not based on industry best practices

Does not explain the application of query design and how queries can be made more efficient

19

Data Duplication and Redundancy

Explains data duplication and redundancy issues that could be occurring and provides logical normalization and other techniques for improving the scenario database

Explains data duplication and redundancy issues that could be occurring and provides normalization and other techniques, but techniques would not logically improve the scenario database

Does not explain data duplication and redundancy issues that could be occurring and provide normalization and other techniques

19

Multiple-User Access Issues and Errors: Concurrency

Describes various applicable methods for solving record concurrency errors and issues as they occur in the scenario

Describes various methods for solving record concurrency errors and issues, but methods may not be applicable to the issues as they occur in the scenario

Does not describe various methods for solving record concurrency errors and issues

19

Multiple-User Access Issues and Errors: Enhancement

Describes and defends recommended methods that can be used to enhance multi-user access within the context of the scenario, and defense includes support

Describes and defends recommended methods, but methods would not be useful in enhancing multi-user access within the context of the scenario or defense lacks clarity, detail, or support

Does not describe and defend recommended methods for enhancing multi-user access

19

Articulation of Response Submission has no major errors related to citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization

Submission has major errors related to citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that negatively impact readability and articulation of main ideas

Submission has critical errors related to citations, grammar, spelling, syntax, or organization that prevent understanding of ideas

5

Earned Total 100%