Case Study #2

Personal Trainer, Inc.

Personal Trainer, Inc., owns and operates fitness centers in a dozen Midwestern cities. The centers have done well, and the company is planning an international expansion by opening a new “supercenter” in the Toronto area. Personal Trainer’s president, Cassia Umi, hired an IT consultant, Susan Park, to help develop an information system for the new facility. During the project, Susan will work closely with Gray Lewis, who will manage the new operation.

Background:

 After evaluating various development strategies, Susan prepared a system requirements document and submitted her recommendations to Cassia Umi, Personal Trainer’s president. During her presentation, Susan discussed several development strategies, including in-house development and outsourcing. She did not feel that a commercial software package would meet Personal Trainer’s needs. Based on her research, Susan felt it would be premature to select a development strategy at this time. Instead, she recommended to Cassia that an in-house team should develop a design prototype, using a relational database as a model. Susan said that the prototype would have two main objectives: It would represent a user-approved model of the new system, and it would identify all systems entities and the relationships among them. Susan explained that it would be better to design the basic system first, and then address other issues, including Web enhancements and implementation options. She proposed a three-step plan: data design, user interface design, and application architecture. She explained that systems analysts refer to this as the systems design phase of a development project. Cassia agreed with Susan’s recommendation, and asked her to go forward with the plan.

Assignments

 1. Review the Personal Trainer fact-finding summary in Chapter 4 and draw an ERD with carnality notation. Assume that system entities include members, activities and services, and fitness instructors.

ans:

       Understudies should center around three principle elements: individuals, exercises and benefits, and fitness instructors. Likewise, the cooperative substance called preparing record is important to connect understudies to exercises/administrations, as appeared in the accompanying example ERD

2. Design tables in 3NF. As you create the database, include various codes for at least three of the fields. 

ans:

  MEMBER               (MEMBER ID, LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME, ADDRESS, PHONE)

 INSTRUCTOR        (INSTRUCTOR ID, LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME, ADDRESS, PHONE) 

 ACTIVITY                (ACTIVITY NO, COURSE NAME, DATE, HOURS, TUITION FEE)

TRAINING RECORD  (MEMBER ID, ACTIVITY NO, DATE, FITNESS LEVEL)

3.Use sample data to populate the fields for at least three records in each table.

Ans:

      

      MEMBER

 
      INSTRUCTION

     ACTIVITY

      TRAINING RECORD

4. Recommend a date format for the new system. Should Personal Trainer adopt a single international standard, or should the format be determined by the country in which the center is located? Write a message to Susan with your recommendation.

ans:

       Fitness coach faces an issue that has turned out to be critical the same number of organizations enter the international commercial center. Should a little multinational organization endeavor to keep up standard date design, or is it better to adjust to the arrangements utilized as a part of the nations where it works? Despite the fact that the Personal Trainer circumstance includes dates, it could include cash designs, numeric portrayals, weights and measures, or whatever other traditions that contrast from one nation to another.There is no standard response to this inquiry. Fitness coach must utilize the nearby arrangement in every single outer relationship with a specific end goal to keep away from disarray and operational issues in Canada and to keep up consumer loyalty. Be that as it may, shouldn't something be said about inside interchanges? Numerous clients may feel that the best approaches a program or large scale that consequently makes an interpretation of dates into the organization best comprehended by the beneficiary. For instance, in a correspondence from Personal Trainer home office in Chicago to the Toronto supercenter about the Canada Day occasion on July 1, 2009, the date would show up in Canadian configuration as 1.7.2009