GST 5083 - INFORMATION SYSTEMS & ELECTRONIC COMMERCE

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Malaysian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship & Business

UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA KELANTAN( UMK SARAWAK )

GROUP MEMBERS

1. Arni B. Hj. Morshidi P14D461P2. Anisah Bt Ismail P14D389P3. Syarifah Rohaya Bt Wan Idris P14D397P4. Dayang Adelina Bt Hj Abang Muan P14D394P5. Norhana Aini Bt Saini P14D398P

LEGO: EMBRACING CHANGE BY COMBINING BI WITH A FLEXIBLE INFORMATION SYSTEM

CASE STUDY MEETING 2

Question 1•Explain the role of the database in SAP’s three-tier system.

Question 2•Explain why distributed architectures are flexible.

QUESTIONS

Question 3•Identify some of the businesses intelligence features included in SAP’s business software suite.

Question 4•What are the main advantages and disadvantages of having multiple databases in a distributed architecture? Explain.

QUESTIONS

Question 1

Explain the role of the database in SAP’s three-tier system.

ROLES

as an information storage system

as a reports generator

based on a flexible three-tier client-server architecture that can easily be adapted to

the new Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) available in the latest versions of the

software

Question 1

Explain the role of the database in SAP’s three-tier system.

At third tier, process clients’ requests to the database system which consists of one or more relational databases

Question 2

Explain why distributed architectures are flexible.

REASONSA distributed architecture system is a software system in which components located on networked computers communicate and

coordinate their actions by passing messages

They store data across multiple computers, distributed databases can improve performance at end-user work sites by allowing transactions to be processed on many machines, instead of being limited to one

They also bank on an improved performance of the machines, as data is located near the site of greatest demand, and the database

systems themselves are parallelized, allowing load on the databases to be balanced among servers

They are also more flexible for purposes of expansion of the database and transparency, as the data can be monitored on site of the specific computers as the data is potentially stored within the

departments they relate to

They are economically flexible and may cost less to create a network of smaller computers with the power of a single large computer

Question 3

Identify some of the businesses intelligence features included in SAP’s business software suite.

Supply Chain Management (SCM)

• monitoring and analysis as well as forecasting, planning and inventory optimization

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)

• Enable managers to optimize development process and system

Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)

• Include Human Capital Management (HCM) application for personnel administration and development

Question 4

What are the main advantages and disadvantages of having multiple databases in a distributed architecture? Explain.

ADVANTAGES DISADVANTAGES

Multiple database contains the tables that store data on product, daily operation, supply chain and thousands of employees

The additional overhead of these transactions can be a performance penalty when the total amount of data in the network is small. Users also see slower performance when accessing data that is not local

Managers can easily use the SAP query tool to obtain reports from the database because it does not require any technical skills

Increased the use of database space. Every table must exist in every database. When the number of tables is very large, the amount of space used can be significant. Administrators must use database storage parameters to size tables and reduce database space consumption

Distributed architecture enables authorized personnel to have direct access to database system from the company’s various location including in Europe, North America and Asia

Administrators must keep the schemes of all database synchronized and ensure that the network is configured to take optimal advantage of the distributed-database environment in term of availability and performance. Although database backups are more flexible in a distributed-database environment, multiple databases add complexity to the backup process