As is the case with many of the Online sections for this course, I have gotten some good questions related to the Assignment 3 content and I wanted to give you some clarifying guidance on what is expected.  This assignment is arguably the most technically challenging, especially when you do not have the opportunity for a class session to talk through the content.

     For the assignment, you are to use the PDF document attached to that specific content item (in Module 4) in order to help you complete questions 1 thru 5.  The PDF shows you two records from two separate tables housed in two separate databases (MPD and CSS).  The chart at the bottom of the content area is there only for reference to help you understand what a combined data warehouse model may look like as you brought those two database tables together.  You are not expected to fill out this chart or re-create it in any fashion.

-For question 1, you need to identify the primary key of one of the tables on the MPD database.  Note (as shown in the question) that the way parent objects and children are reflected in database terms is to list the PARENT.CHILD separated by a period.  

-For question 2, you are being asked to try and create a basic SQL query to extract certain information from one of the SALES tables (the one from the CSS database).  SQL queries have three parts (refer to sample figure 5.10 as a guide) and here is some additional information on each: 

– a SELECT clause, which is where you state what fields you want to see in your results.  Fields are properly written as TABLE.Field1, TABLE.Field2, etc.

– a FROM clause, which is where you state from what table you want to pull the results.  The example in the text has two tables, but you are only pulling from one (SALES) for this assignment.

– a WHERE clause, which is where you state how you want to filter the results.  This is where you define the specific constraints.  Without this, it will pull all fields you asked for in the SELECT, from the table you asked for in the FROM line.

An example would be: SELECT TABLE.Field1, TABLE.Field2, TABLE, Field3

                                 FROM TABLE

                                 WHERE TABLE.Field1 = 12345

Note that in the actual query, there is no mention of the database you are pulling from (MPD or CSS in this example).  Rather, this is done at a level above any queries since a SQL query only goes against a single database.  Thus, you do not need to have any reference to the MPD or CSS database as part of your query.

– For questions 3 & 4, you should refer to section 5.4 where there are topics on information assurance and quality of information to help you answer this.  Specifically for #3, you should do some analysis on the two tables from the attachment and identify some inconsistencies that may cause issues should you simply merge the two tables together into a single warehouse.

– For question 5, refer to section 10.2 where there are actually six business intelligence ‘capabilities’ identified (HINT:  first one listed in ‘Production Reports’).   You should select five of them and provide your response for this question.

Finally, note that the last line of the content states that you can simple paste your responses into the assignment content area – no need to submit a separate Word doc here