CI7300: Data Management and Governance

Coursework : Database Design & Development

Background

Delphi Promotions is a promotions company that handles advertising campaigns for its clients. Clients approach the company with the product or product range that they wish to promote and Delphi develop an initial proposal for a range of possible campaigns. When the client agrees to a specific campaign from the portfolio, a contract is signed and Delphi produce the required adverts and arrange for the relevant press and magazine advertising space, web space, radio or TV air-time or poster locations.

It is important for Delphi to keep track of the campaigns they are running for clients. At present all documentation for a campaign is held on paper. This system worked well when the number of clients was small but the company now employs over 40 staff and have around 50 clients with approximately 30 campaigns running at any one time. The company has simply become too large to rely on paper records. Delphi has found that it is not keeping accurate track of a campaign and there is concern that the company is losing business through poor management of campaigns and have decided that they need a database system to keep track of Delphi’s campaigns.

Information Requirements

Staff

As previously mentioned, Delphi have a permanent staff of over 40 people. Every member of staff has a role (for example, account manager, campaign manager, graphic designer, etc), a salary grade and a corresponding charge-out rate at which clients are charged. Staff names should also be recorded together with the telephone number, fax number and email. There are members of staff with the same name therefore a staff number will also be required for identification purposes.

Clients and Campaigns

Each client company is asked to nominate two members of staff to act as contacts for each campaign. The information requested is the person’s name, position, email address and telephone number. Delphi allocate an account manager to each client no matter how many campaigns the client is involved in. The account manager is responsible for maintaining contact with the client after campaigns have finished as part of the marketing activities for Delphi.

A campaign is conducted to promote a particular product for the client. When a campaign is first started, it will be given a unique campaign code, for example C111, and a campaign name. Each campaign has a campaign manager who is responsible for the day-to-day running of the campaign. Once a campaign reaches the development stage a campaign team is formed by the campaign manager from Delphi staff. Staff may work on more than one campaign at the same time.

The Campaign Process

The initial stages of a campaign will involve a number of meetings with the client and the design of the campaign. These processes will involve staff members who will be involved in the campaign. The system needs to keep a record of all meetings held for a campaign. The date, time and duration of each meeting should be recorded along its purpose and the internal staff attending. Whilst specific details of the room used for the meeting are not required, a record of where the meeting was held is necessary. Meetings will either be held at Delphi or at the client’s offices.

A campaign summary sheet is created at the start of a campaign and maintained throughout to summarise the details of the campaign. An example of a summary sheet can be found in Figure 1.

All campaigns consist of adverts. Each advert within a campaign has an advert code (e.g. A111) for filing and record-keeping purposes. Types of advert can be either newspaper, magazine, radio, television, cinema, poster, web or leaflet. Along with each advert is a brief description of its content, a description of the intended audience (e.g. financial newspapers, children’s TV, sports events) and details of its intended size (e.g. fullpage or ½ page for print, A4 or A5 leaflet or 30 seconds for broadcast media), so that the purchasing assistant can identify the right location for the advert. Each advert is made up of a range of components, such as photographs, text, graphics, actors, sound recordings, and so on. As the design of the components proceeds, a folder of work in progress is kept referenced by campaign number, advert number and component type (for example, C111, A19, photographs which will contain all the detailed requirements for the photographs for that advert). When a folder is complete and signed off by the advertising executive, the developed component is recorded as being ready for production and the design completion date is recorded. The campaign manager can judge progress of an advert, or a campaign by looking for incomplete components. The campaign manager knows a campaign design is complete when all the required components for all the adverts are recorded as complete.

Purchasing assistants are responsible for finding and buying the required location space for adverts in the campaigns, referred to as ‘placements’. This includes TV and radio time, newspaper and magazine space and negotiating with agencies who manage advertising hoarding space and leafleting campaigns. Each placement is given a unique code within the campaign, e.g. for campaign C145, advert A18 might have three placements, PL1, PL2, PL3. Advert A19 may have two – PL4, PL5 and so on. The various types of placement have different information recorded against them – there is a standard record card in use so that the purchasing assistant can record these details ‘on-the-fly’. An example record card is shown in Figure 2. A single advert may get placed in several locations, e.g. all Sunday newspapers, in which case each newspaper is treated as a separate placement.

Once a campaign starts, its first day is known as rollout day, the purchasing assistants are responsible for checking that the adverts do appear as planned – for each placement they check to see that the advert was presented in the place and on the dates expected. A note is made of any placements that do not occur as planned.

System Requirements

Delphi require a database to support their key activities in a campaign, this includes the recording of:

· Staff details and their involvement in campaigns

· Client details including contacts for particular campaigns

· Campaign details

· Meeting details

· Advert and placement details

Details of the contents of actual documentation produced during a campaign is part of the campaign documentation and is not regarded as relevant information for the database which is essentially concerned with recording the information necessary to track the progress of a campaign.

Figure 1: Campaign Summary

(summary form used to confirm the details of the campaign to be developed)

Figure 2: Placement-Location Record Card

Design and Development Requirements

Conceptual Design Stage

Design a class diagram that will capture the data and links 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. The model needs to capture the data requirements in order for the system to work. You also need to develop a list of constraints and a list of assumptions.

Implementation Stage

This stage will be to implement your design, using Oracle.

· Convert your model into an SQL database.

· Populate your database with some sample data

· Test your database. You will need to consider testing the database to ensure that the database meets the information requirements of the system. You need to create and run SQL queries that produce the information required.

The report will require the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction – one page description of the aims and objectives of the report.

Chapter 2: The Class Diagram with constraints and assumptions.

Chapter 3: Implementation. Provide a listing of the SQL table definitions.

Chapter 4: Six queries that demonstrate that your database meets the requirements of the system.

Chapter 5: Conclusion. A critical evaluation of your final product and a review of the entire exercise.

Report Mark Sheet