BIA B450F Assignment 1 Weighting: 20% Due Date: 24 October 2022 (Monday) Learning outcome: Explain the fundamentals of data warehouse and big data, and evaluate the architecture of related platform. Important note You should note that there might not be a single correct answer to the questions. Your answers to these questions may be different from each other and could all be equally valid. Question E-commerce in Hong Kong has risen as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. As people are urged to self-isolate and stay home, there has been a surge of demand in online shopping in Hong Kong. Customers can easily search and buy foods and groceries from online supermarkets in Hong Kong such as ParknShop, city’super, Great Food Hall, etc. You are required to pick an online supermarket and study its products and operations. Your study should address following questions: Q1. How can customers search for foods and groceries, place orders, and track the delivery Q2. How is a sale transaction completed on the online supermarket and what kinds of data items may have been collected during a transaction Q3. What is the likely number of choices of foods and groceries offered on the online supermarket Suppose that the company does not have a data warehouse but intends to build one and you are the Business Systems Analyst being put in charge of the initial planning for the data warehouse development project. During an initial project meeting in which representatives from different departments of the company were present, there was an argument between the managers. Some managers argued that a data warehouse should be built bottom-up for the marketing department (who is the most enthusiastic department behind the project) first and, if it proved to be productive, then other departments could follow. Other managers argued that the data warehouse should be designed top-down for the whole company right from the beginning and also enable the company to integrate social media data for analyzing customer opinions in near future. The CEO of the company decided, at the end of the meeting, that further research should be carried out. After the meeting, the CEO then asked you to write him a report to discuss the following issues related to the use of data warehouse in the company: Q4. Why are operational systems not suitable for providing strategic information 2 Q5. What are the opportunities that can be provided by data warehouse and business intelligence for the online supermarket List and explain three such opportunities. Q6. A data warehouse is subject-oriented. What would be the major critical business subjects for the company Q7. List the possible data sources from which you will bring the data into your data warehouse. State your assumptions. Q8. What are the challenges and issues involved in building the data warehouse for the company Q9. What are the major factors to be considered in when choosing between top-down approach and bottom-up approach for the data warehouse development Q10. What would be the most appropriate data warehouse architecture to select for the company Draw a block diagram of the recommended architecture, list and explain the major components of the architecture and justify your recommendation. Q11. Should the data warehouse be hosted on-premises or on the cloud Your report should include a brief introduction of the online supermarket and its searching, ordering and delivery operations addressing the questions, and detailed discussions of the key issues listed above and your recommendations. You must also cite the sources of information that you have consulted in this study. The report must include the following sections: 1. Introduction of the company and observation/discussion on the online supermarket’s searching, ordering and operations (Q1 – Q3) (25 marks) 2. Problem of operational systems for providing strategic information (Q4) (10 marks) 3. Three opportunities of data warehouse and business intelligence for the company (Q5) (15 marks) 4. Critical business subjects for the company and valid data sources (Q6 – Q7) (10 marks) 5. Challenges and issues involved in building the data warehouse for the company and factors to be considered for choosing the approach (Q8 – Q9) (15 marks) 6. Data warehouse architecture and the hosting of data warehouse (Q10– Q11) (25 marks) How Assignment 1 will be assessed This assignment addresses complex issues, so you are not expected to provide a comprehensive analysis. You should, however, demonstrate that: You have reviewed a range of references on these topics from different sources (you can find a large number of references on the Web using a search engine such as Google): and You have a clear understanding of fundamentals of data warehouse and pros and cons of different of data warehouse architectures. In the end, the quality of your argument is more important than which of the architectures you endorse and recommend.
