Assignment title: Information
Write a report to describe the development of a database based on a on a specific
case provided for this exercise.
Aim: the aim of the exercise is to enable students to investigate a business situation
within the context of an organisation, design and implement a database to support
the data needs of the organisation..
The report requirements and the marking criteria are included in the case study.
Background
Home Sweet Home (HSH) is a chain of stores selling an extensive range of household
goods from stores located throughout the UK. The company recognises the growing
importance of e-commerce in the consumer market and in a bid to remain ahead of
its competitors, HSH has decided to expand into this area and offer customers the
opportunity to purchase items from a Web site. It should be possible for a customer
to log onto the HSH Web site, select and purchase their required items and pay for
them. The items would then be delivered to the customer at home. HSH aims to
make shopping from its Web site easy for its customer by stocking the goods they
require, offering them a wide range of alternatives and keeping then informed them
about new products coming onto the market.
The company requires a database system to meet these aims. The database needs
to store information about products in stock and products that will shortly be
coming onto the market, to track the stock of products available and to record
orders made by the company's customers.
Information Required
When a customer enters the HSH website, they are presented with a home page that
has a number of options that the customer can select as illustrated in Figure 1. A
customer can either browse the site by exploring the various product categories, e.g.
kitchenware, cleaning products and storage solutions, or by examining the site's
favourites and top selling products, or by selecting the product directly using the
product reference code, or by use of a keyword search. Alternatively a customer can
chose to directly place an order.
When browsing the site a customer is taken through a series of pages to select
products using certain criteria. For example, when a customer selects one of the
categories in the top left corner of the home page they are presented with a set of
sub categories for that category. Figure 2 shows an example of this. When a
fall under the chosen category. The first page displays just the picture and name of a
product - see figure 3. If the customer clicks on a specific product's picture they can
view full details of that product – its name, description, product reference number
and price. This is shown in figure 4. It is at this point that the customer has the
option to place the product in his shopping basket by entering the quantity required
and then clicking on the 'Add to Shopping Basket' button.
All products fall into one sub-category and but can qualify for listing under several
categories. For example, a bread bin is in the sub-category of 'In the Kitchen' but will
qualify for both the 'kitchenware' and 'storage solutions' categories. If a customer
uses a keyword search they are taken directly to the individual product pages as
shown in figure 3. The product reference search takes a customer direct to the
description of the individual product as shown in figure 4.
If the customer does not want to browse they can go direct to the order form as
shown in figure 5 where they enter the product reference number and quantity
required and then click on the 'Add to Shopping Basket' button.
A shopping basket contains items that a customer is thinking about purchasing.
Once an item has been added to the basket, it can be changed in terms of the
quantity required or it can be removed from the basket. An example of the shopping
basket is shown in figure 6. The first time in a session that a customer decides to add
an item to their shopping basket, or wants to view the basket for the first time, they
need to enter their username and password to log on. If the customer is visiting the
site for the first time, they will need to sign up for an account before they can use
the shopping basket facility. This is achieved by completion of a registration form.
An example of this process is available in figure 7.
When a customer actually wants to purchase the items in their shopping basket they
click on the 'purchase' button that takes them to the Basket Summary page and it is
here that the order is created. Postage and packing costs are added, £2.95 for
orders to the value of £39.99 inclusive, but free on orders of £40.00 and above. The
customer also provides the address for the despatch of the goods. The default
address is the customer's home address but the customer can add additional
delivery addresses as required. These are stored and can be selected from a drop-
down menu on the basket summary screen. If the customer requests next day
delivery, a charge of £4.50 is levied. Again the shipping method can be selected
from a drop-down menu on the page although the only options at present are 'UK
standard charge' and 'Next day delivery. However it is anticipated that if the
company expands and sells to overseas customers then there will be additional
shipping methods. An example of the basket summary page is provided in figure 8.
The final step in the purchase process is for the customer to provide payment
details. For security purposes details of a customer's credit card(s) are not stored.
They must be entered each time a customer makes a purchase.
To manage the delivery of orders to clients, HSH has divided its operation into 10
geographical regions within the UK. Customers are supplied from their local
distribution centre that maintains a stock of products listed on the web site.
If a customer makes an order and the distribution centre does not have enough of an
item ordered in stock then it will deliver the items ordered that are available and
hold those where a delivery of stock is awaited. This means that an order can be
delivered in parts. It is therefore necessary to record whether an order item has
been delivered or not and to help HSH track the progress of a customer's order, it
would be useful to record the delivery date. If an item of stock is not available, an
expected date should be recorded so that a customer can be informed of the
possible delivery date. New products will be advertised on the Web site before they
come into stock so that customers are aware of their arrival. In such cases the date
the product is expected to be available must also be displayed.
Coursework Requirements
Conceptual and logical design tasks using UML Class diagram
Design a class diagram that will capture the data, associations and constraints capable of
supporting the requirements outlined above. The figures provide some sample data to give
you additional information on the kind of data you will need to store. You are not required
to reproduce any particular formatting of the Web pages. The model should be capable of
merely supporting the Web site – providing/recording data to/from the Web site.
Specifically the system should be capable of helping OWW meets its aims described in the
'Background'.
You need to prepare a class diagram with suitable set of attributes with their data types,
indicate primary keys, foreign keys, named relationships, constraints and assumptions. You
are NOT required to capture any operations in the class diagram or any data types for the
class attributes.
Implementation Stage
The final stage will be to implement your design using Oracle. You will need to perform the
following activities:
Convert your Class diagram model into an SQL database.
Populate your database with some sample data
Test your database, and provide five sample queries you can with your database to
retrieve some useful information.
Coursework Assessment
The coursework component of the module will be assessed by the final report.
Refer to the mark sheet given above to identify the key deliverable and objectives of this
report.