Purpose To demonstrate the ability to define and propose a database design. Problem NHD Development Group Inc. builds, leases, and manages shopping centers, convenience stores, and other ventures throughout the country. Last year, NHD purchased several malls in southern California. These buildings are in areas where they have shown potential for a positive financial return. David is the chief information officer for NHD. David's responsibility is to provide information to the board of directors so it can make strategic decision about future development ventures. Most of these malls do their bookkeeping on paper and David is concerned that the data he needs from the malls will not be easy to obtain. Because of the paper-based systems, David expects it to be difficult to obtain items such as total sales, total commissions, and dealer sales. David believes that by creating a specialized database for the mall managers to use, he can ensure that the data he needs will be easy for managers to create and maintain. The malls will be able to use the database to create the reports he needs so he can easily demonstrate the financial health of the malls to the board. The malls are housed in large buildings that are owned by the parent company, NHD. The buildings are divided into booths that are rented to dealers, who then fill the booths with inventory that is sold to customers. A dealer might be a small company or an individual. It is the dealer's responsibility to manage its own inventory; the mall does not maintain an inventory list for the dealters. As dealers sells items from its inventory, the mall records the dealer number and the price of each item using the information on the item's price tag. At the end of the month, the mall generates a list of total sales for each dealer, computes the mall's commission, deducts the dealer's rent for booth space, and then issues the dealer a check for the remaining amount. David determined that the database must manage sales, booths in the mall, and dealers that rent the booths. At the end of the month, the database must be able to produce a complete list of sales by dealer. In addition, the database must determine the revenue owed to each dealer by deducting the dealer's rent from the commission on the sales reported. David has discussed his goals with the board and they have agreed to go forward with developing a database. David selected one mall to serve as the pilot for the project, which will allow him to test the database before implementating it with all of the malls. Lisa, is the chosen mall's manager and she is excited about replacing the mall's manual systems with a database. After meeting with Lisa, David has collected a couple of forms that are currently being used to manage the mall. (See Figure 1 and Figure 2)
