Introduction to Reational Database - Essay Example

 Introduction to Relational Database Abstract This report is aimed to provide an overview of the present ICT environment in a hypothetical company Speed Trans to recommend the future ICT infrastructure and system requirements of the company. The company is still young in the business and has recently expanded its operations to several states in the United States. Speed Trans is supposed to gain business momentum is near future and a relational database management system along with communication infrastructure is supposed to replace the existing mix of manual and semi-automated processes. Additionally, the system is supposed to provide decision support, online transaction support to e-commerce and e-business clientele. The research has identified the requirement of a Web-based Information Portal based on a relational database management system along with several integrated modules to extend and support to various business operations. Recommendations will be finally presented to the management committee for approval and implementation of the system. 1. Purpose of the Report This report is intended to introduce an issue related to Information Communication Technology (ICT) within our firm. The mandate given by the executive committee requires a thorough study of the present systems and the preparation of a detailed plan that can fulfill the company’s ICT requirement for at least next three years. More specifically the report will talk about the requirement of a Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) to streamline the initiation, processing, storage and retrieval of transactions throughout the company in an organized, efficient and cost effective manner. In this connection a research will be conducted to probe into the implications that the proposed TPS may cause if implemented using relational databases. 2. Background of the Company Speed Trans is a newly established firm which deals with automobile spare parts. The company is looking to expand its supply chain for various states within United States. The company’s headquarter is based at New Jersey and a net of branch offices is expanding quickly in all major states and cities. The company is presently working with various other firms to supply them with automobile spare parts on regular basis. The company operations require an online communication system with its own branch office and other firms. The system is also required to be integrated with the company’s information system. Moreover, the firms is experiencing a high growth in the business and the present ICT setup often faces bottleneck conditions to support the business operations in size and speed. The new system should be designed keeping in mind the future scalability requirements that may arise within at least three years from now. Speed Trans has initially launched a limited ICT setup which is now required to be expanded to a fully integrated Information System along with online communication capabilities to handle the workload of a medium sized enterprise. 3. Current Business Issues The current system has several issues due to its limited scope. These issues cause delay in business transactions, communications bottlenecks restrict the smooth flow of critical business information to and from business partners and clientele, due to lack of integration between various system modules the information stored in various systems cannot be used to provide business intelligence and decision support. These and many other business issues identified in the study are discussed in the following paragraphs; a) Lack of System Support Presently every business operations is not supported by the system and a hybrid environment of system supported and manual operations and transactions are used to achieve business objectives, e.g. system maintains business partners and clientele information but it does not support automated email module to ensure better interaction between various business segments. b) No Decision Support Today business heavily depends on information systems to make smart, quick and in time decisions that can have a major impact on the business. However the Speed Trans crucially lacks a Decision Support System (DSS) to ensure business growth through intelligent decisions, e.g. system supports storage of client specific information however it cannot provide a comparative study on predefined or dynamic business variables to draw a clear business picture. It does not support a comparison between two clients to earmark a client’s priority within business domain. Similarly, like many other decision support systems it does not provide a big business picture or drilling down the information to fetch out the required results. c) No Support for E-business and E-commerce The advent of internet has drastically changed the business operations today and no serious business growth is possible without integrating e-business and e-commerce activities within business domain. Dave (2009) states the importance of e-business in these words, “E-business has introduced new opportunities for small and large organizations to compete in the global market place.” The present system does not provide online support to business partners and clientele. Transaction have to be processed locally which consumes a lot of time and causes unnecessary delay. Moreover, most of the business partners have integrated online modules and e-commerce is a viable solution to enhance business, similarly integrating e-business module can provide extended support and ease of use to clientele which can result in considerable business growth. 4. Research Finding A thorough research was conducted to address the above stated issues with the system. There are several solutions available to address the issues pertaining to the development of an ICT infrastructure including an integrated information system based on some relation database management tool. There are two major application environments available to develop the system which includes a simple Management Information System and a Web-based Information Portal. Both of these systems can be developed on a relational database and are equally viable solutions. However, there are certain added features that a web-based Information Portal can offer to accommodate specific business operations. (Grehan, 2011). Speed Trans information portal is supposed to handle heavy load of external transactions through e-commerce module and a quick access to information is mandatory requirement of e-business clientele. These two business domain specific requirement are best met by a Web-based Information Portal. A web-portal is a set of integrated system module to support the requirement of specific system user. The system can offer a different set of environment variables to various users based on their specific authorization. Web-portals are more prone to security issues therefore, a strong user authentication and authorization over a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) channel will be required to establish a connection to the system. Additionally, a strong security spectrum will be required to safeguard vital system resources from hackers and viruses. Special network protection technologies including software and hardware tools and mechanisms are required to be implemented to ensure secure, smooth and stable information portal implementation. 5. Recommendations Based on the research conducted and the business specific requirements following recommendations are made to Executive Management Team; a) A Web-based information Portal is required to be designed, developed and implanted on a relational database management tool like Oracle. b) The system will primarily be designed as Transaction Processing System where various integrated system module will provide consolidated information to ensure enhance business intelligence and decision support. c) Separate modules for Finance, Admin, and Human Resource Management will be designed to support company specific support. d) The system is required to have separated modules to supported e-business and e-commerce heavy transaction load. e) A network infrastructure is required to be established to ensure extended round the clock system support to internal and external system users. f) Enhanced Three-layered CISCO information security model is required to be implemented to ensure secure access to the system resources. References Dave Chaffey (2009). E-Business and E-Commerce Management, 3rd eds, , New Delhi: Taj Press. Grehan, R., (2011). ODBMS for RDBMS Users, ODBMS.org, Retrieved from http://www.odbms.org/Introduction/rdbms2odbms.aspx Read More