GUIDELINES
The purpose of an assignment is to ensure that the Learner is able to:
- Use methods of enquiry and research in a disciplined field.
- Interpret and evaluate text.
- Have a sound understanding of key principles and theories, rules and awareness.
- Solve unfamiliar problems using correct procedures as well as investigate and critically analyse information and report thereof.
- Present and communicate information reliably and coherently.
Instructions and guidelines for writing assignments
1. Use the correct cover page provided by the institution.
2. All essay type assignments must include the following:
Table of contents
Introduction
Main body with subheadings
Conclusions and recommendations
Bibliography
3. The length of the entire assignment must have minimum of 5 pages. Preferably typed with font size 12 The quality of work submitted is more important than the number of assigned pages.
4. Copying is a serious offence which attracts a severe penalty and must be avoided at all costs. If any learner transgresses this rule, the lecturer will retain the assignments and ask the affected learners to resubmit a new assignment which will be capped at 50%.
5. Use the Harvard referencing method.
Part -1:
QUESTIONS 1
Search the Web for an example of each of the major types of e-commerce and listed in table below. Create a presentation or written report describing each company (take a screenshot of each, if possible), and explain why it fits into the category of e-commerce to which you have assigned it.
QUESTIONS 2
Locate where cookies are stored on your computer. (They are probably in a folder entitled "Cookies" within your browser program.) List the top 10 cookies you find and write a brief report describing the kinds of sites that placed the cookies.
What purpose do you think the cookies serve? Also, what do you believe are the major advantages and disadvantages of cookies? In your opinion, do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, or vice versa?
QUESTIONS 3
Select two countries (excluding the United States) and prepare a short report describing their basic Internet infrastructure. Are they public or commercial? How and where do they connect to backbones within the United States?
QUESTIONS 4
Identify the infrastructural requirements and security issues that must be addressed in adopting mobile commerce as another channel of business transaction.
Part - 2:
QUESTION ONE
Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology is attempting to improve on its employees' ability to communicate more easily with one another. The most significant challenges pertain to the fact that many employees are geologically dispersed. This has made it very difficult to conduct important meetings and share information.
1. Identify and explain types of technology that might be utilized in helping the employees to work more successfully together on the project.
Object is defined as "something that is or is capable of being seen, touched or otherwise sensed and about which user's stores data and associate behaviour." Please explain what it means by something, data, and behaviour in this definition.
QUESTION TWO
2.1 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
During data and process modeling, Susan Park developed a logical model of the proposed system. She drew an entity-relationship diagram and constructed a set of levelled and balanced DFDs. Now Susan is ready to consider various development strategies for the new system. She will investigate traditional and Web-based approaches and weigh the advantages and disadvantages of in-house development versus other alternatives. As she moves ahead to the systems design phase, she will review design guidelines, consider the use of prototypes, and analyze the possible use of codes.
Should the new system be designed as a Web-based system? Why or why not? What are some specific issues and options that Susan should consider in making a decision?
Should Susan use a prototype during systems design? What options does she have, and how would you advise her?
Susan wants to prepare a presentation that will calculate the total cost of ownership for the system. What financial analysis tools are available to her, and what are the advantages (and possible disadvantages) of each tool?
QUESTION THREE
Soft-Wear, Limited (SWL)
Soft-Wear, Limited (SWL), is a continuing case study that illustrates the knowledge and skills described in each chapter. In this case study, the student acts as a member of the SWL systems development team and performs various tasks.
Rick Williams, a systems analyst, and Carla Moore, a programmer/analyst, continued their work on the SWL payroll system project. After completing detailed interviews and other fact- finding activities, Rick and Carla now understand how the current system operates and the new requirements desired by users. They are ready to organize and document their findings by preparing a logical model of the payroll system.
Business Rules
After they completed the preliminary investigation, Rick and Carla felt that they knew more about the system entities and how they interacted.
The two analysts knew that the payroll department issues pay-checks based on timesheet data submitted by department heads, and that each employee receives a W-2 form at the end of the year. They also knew that the human resources department prepares employee status changes, and the payroll department enters the pay data. The diagram also noted the output of state and federal government reports and internal reports to SWL's finance and payroll departments. The credit union and the SWL stock transfer department reports and fund transfers also were included.
At the meeting, Amy made several comments:
- The human resources department would be setting up additional ESIP deduction choices for employees under a new 401(k) plan. Human resources also would receive ESIP reports from the payroll system.
- The payroll department enters timesheet data received from department heads, who do not interact directly with the system. Rather than showing the department head entity symbol on the context diagram, the input data flow from the payroll department should be expanded and called PAY DETAIL.
- State and federal reporting requirements differ, so they should be treated as two separate entities. Also, periodic changes in government tax rates should be shown as inputs to the payroll system.
- All accounting reports, except for an overall financial summary, should be distributed to the accounting department instead of to the finance department.
- The accounting department also should receive a copy of the payroll report.
- The bank returns cleared payroll checks to the payroll department once a month. Amy reminded the analysts that the payroll system handles the reconciliation of payroll checks.
3.1.1 Using this above discussion between Rick and Carla, construct a context diagram and 0 Data Flow Diagram for the Soft-Wear (Ltd)
QUESTION FOUR
4.1 You are an IT consultant, and you are asked to create a new system for a small real
estate brokerage firm. Your only experience is with traditional data and process modelling techniques. This time, you decide to try an object-oriented approach. How will you begin? How are the tasks different from traditional structured analysis?
Part -3:
QUESTIONS ONE
The following is a case study describing the data requirements for a video rental company.
The video rental company has several branches throughout a country. The data held on each branch is the branch address made up of street, city, state, and zip code, and the telephone number. Each branch is given a branch number, which is unique throughout the company. Each branch is allocated a number of staff members, including a Manager. The Manager is responsible for the day-to-day running of a given branch. The data held on a member of staff is his or her name, position, and salary. Each member of staff is given a staff number, which is unique throughout the company. Each branch has a stock of videos. The data held on a video is the catalogue number, video number, title, category, daily rental, cost, status, the names of the main actors, and the director. The catalogue number uniquely identifies each video. However, in most cases, there are several copies of each video at a branch, and the individual copies are identified using the video number. A video is given a category such as Action, Adult, Children, Drama, Horror, or Sci-Fi. The status indicates whether a specific copy of a video is available for rent. Before hiring a video from the company, a customer must first register as a member of a local branch. The data held on a member is the first and last name, address, and the date that the member registered at a branch. Each member is given a member number, which is unique throughout all branches of the company. Once registered, a member is free to rent videos, up to maximum of ten at any one time. The data held on each video rented is the rental number, the full name and number of the member, the video number, title, and daily rental, and the dates the video is rented out and date returned. The rental number is unique throughout the company.
Identify the main entity types and relationship types of the video rental company.
Identify attributes and associate them with entity or relationship types. Choose the primary key for each (strong) entity type. (8)
Describe (in one or two statements) what attributes represent in an ER model.
Provide examples of simple, composite, single valued, multi-valued, and derived attributes.
QUESTIONS TWO
Blanche has a fashion design company called BLB_Best_Clothing Pty. That she has just opened recently. She uses a book to correct all her customers' details and transactions manually. She has realized that she lost one of the books where important information about her customers where stored. She has heard from one of her friends that creating a database for her company will help her store clients' details and all the transactions in a safer way. She comes to you, knowing that you are studying database at Richfield Graduate Institute of Technology College. She requests you to explain the following points that will help her decide if she should create a database or not:
You are required:
Explain what is a database system and why is important for her to have a database since she is dealing with a huge amount of customers.
Explain FIVE roles of database administrator since he will be responsible of maintaining the database systems.
Explain FIVE advantages of Database Management Systems (DBMS) as the main software that handles the database
QUESTIONS THREE
Create an ERD for each of the following descriptions
Each of the Spar's divisions is composed of many departments. Each of those departments has many employees assigned to it, but each employee works for only one department. Each department is managed by one employee, and each of those managers can manage only one department at a time.
Shoprite operates many shops. Each shop is located in a region. Each region can be "home" to many of the Shoprite shops. Each shop employs many employees, but each of those employees is employed by only one shop.
Using practical example, discuss what SQL is and the distinction between DDL and DML as well as how SQL functions fits in both of them
QUESTIONS FOUR
Using the Employee table below, write the rational schema and draw it's dependency diagram. Identify all dependencies.
Identify all dependencies.
Using the Employee table below, write the rational schema and draw it's dependency diagram.
Create a database whose table(s) is at least in 3rd normal form, showing the dependency diagram and the rational schema for each table.
Part -4:
NB:
1. Candidates are advised to read the guide lines on page 2.
2. Assignment questions are on page 3.
3. For reference use prescribed, recommended books and other PROGRAMMING Source you may come across.
The purpose of an assignment is to ensure that the Learner is able to:
- Use methods of enquiry and research in a disciplined field.
- Interpret and evaluate text.
- Have a sound understanding of key principles and theories, rules and awareness.
- Solve unfamiliar problems using correct procedures as well as investigate and critically analyse information and report thereof.
- Present and communicate information reliably and coherently.
Instructions and guidelines for writing assignments
1. Use the correct cover page provided by the institution.
2. The length of the entire assignment must have minimum of 5 pages. Preferably typed with font size 12
2.1 The quality of work submitted is more important than the number of assigned pages.
3. Copying is a serious offence which attracts a severe penalty and must be avoided at all costs. If any learner transgresses this rule, the lecturer will retain the assignments and ask the affected learners to resubmit a new assignment which will be capped at 50%.
4. Use the Harvard referencing method.
Programming Oriented Modules
Recommended Software for Commercial Programming:
Integrated Development Environment (IDE): Visual Studio 2012 or latest
Operating System: Windows 8/7
When compiling your Answer Booklet, please take note of the following:
A screenshot of an output, should be followed by the code of the respective output.
Preface:
The goal of this assignment is to introduce, guide and test students on OOP, File I/O and Data structure. The assignment is structured in such a way that every learner can tackle it and most importantly, to assist campuses which are struggling with programming without compromising quality.
QUESTION ONE
Develop a C++ program that uses a while to determine the gross pay (in Dollars) for each of several employees. The company pays "straight-time" for the first 40 hours worked by each employee and pays "time-and-a-half" for all hours worked in excess of 40 hours. You are given a list of the employees of the company, the number of hours each employee worked last week and the hourly rate of each employee. Your program should input this information for each employee and should determine and display the employee's gross pay. Your outputs should appear in the following format:
QUESTION TWO
A parking garage charges a R12.00 minimum fee to park for up to three hours. The garage charges an additional R0.90 per hour for each hour or part thereof in excess of three hours.
The maximum charge for any given 24-hour period is R20.00. Assume that no car parks for longer than 24 hours at a time.
Write a program that will calculate and print the parking charges for each of 3 customers who parked their cars in this garage yesterday. You should enter the hours parked for each customer. Your program should print the results in a neat tabular format and should calculate and print the total of yesterday's receipts. The program should use the function calculateCharges to determine the charge for each customer. Your outputs should appear in the following format:
QUESTION THREE
A company is interested in implementing a payroll system for its employees. You are requested to develop such program in which you must:
- Declare the base class emp.
- Use the function called getInfo(), to get the employee details.
- Declare the derived class salary.
- Declare and define the function getSalary() to get the salary details.
- Define the function calculateNet() to find the net pay.
- Read the number of employees.
- Call the function getInfo(),getSalary() and calculateNet() to each employees.
Test the above operations by writing a complete C++ program using single inheritance.
Part - 5
QUESTIONS ONE
1.1 Over the years, countries and communities have approached need satisfaction in different ways. There are three main approaches that are still followed by communities for the solution of their economic problems. Using examples, discuss
the basic economic systems to provide for the economic models of basics of economy
1.2. Discuss the nature and the purpose of Business Management as a Science, for example state the factors, methods and the principles that enable the business to function effectively.
QUESTION TWO
IMPORTANCE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP
As one of the four factors of production, entrepreneurship is a very scarce resource. The entrepreneur serves the nation's economy by providing jobs and producing goods and services by utilizing the other three factors of production namely human, capital and natural resources. Many successful large businesses today were started as small entrepreneurial ventures.
Being an entrepreneur or small business owner can be very rewarding; profits are good even if risks are high. South Africa has a total population of 44 million people of which only 12, 9 million are employed. Of these only 1, 9 million are self-employed and many of these operate in the informal sector.
We can therefore guess that South Africa has just over 1 million people who could be classified as entrepreneurial business people. But can all small businesses be classified as entrepreneurial? No, many small entrepreneurial concerns go on to be large companies requiring extensive managerial skills. An entrepreneurial business is also one that utilizes many of the same innovative thinking skills found in the smaller one-man start-up operation.
What are the psychological factors that distinguish an entrepreneur from a normal individual?
Describe the factors influencing the entrepreneurial performance.
The delegation process is essential to every manager, for this is how manager get others to share in the organisation's drive performance. A common failing of less effective manager is that they try to be responsible for everything. In so doing, they are overloaded and not very efficient managers. This phenomenon is evident in South African managers, due to the shortage of suitably qualified managers. Consequently, the subordinate suffers because of the manager's failure to delegate and develop the subordinate. Briefly explain the principles of delegation that the managers can follow to succeed in delegating duties or responsibilities to their subordinates.
QUESTION THREE
The year 2020?
- Almost no one will be exempt from change - most of us will be primarily information workers.
- Technologies will compete against each other as they are developed
- The "big four" information technologies (artificial intelligence, computer networks, imaging technology and massive data storage) will become fundamental tools for most workers and will have revolutionary effects on occupations.
- Information technologies will eliminate many jobs, create new ones and radically change others.
Write an essay about change in business industry from conducting their business activities manually to conducting their business activities using computerised system. NB: Your essay must include the following subtitles:
- Describing Change.
- Types of change
- How to handle change situations
- Steps in encouraging creativity
- Understanding resistance to change
QUESTION FOUR
Case Study: Public relations in action-Nike
Many of us recognize the success of Nike Corporation, which has become a well-recognized global brand and a leader around the world in marketing sports apparel. Nike has built up strong up strong brand equity and its brand associations are some of the strongest in the world, such as its successful sponsorships and associations with sports stars like Tiger Woods and its "Just Do It" slogan. In the recent past, however some unfavorable associations were linked to the Nike brand. Critics of the firm have highlighted some of its corporate policies and marketing strategies that led Nike to purchase products from countries where the products from countries where the products were produced in less than acceptable conditions. This has been termed "sweatshops", where the workers who produced these products do not have working conditions or pay scales comparable with those that have become acceptable to developed parts of the world. In the late 1990s Nike was one of many large companies that contracted with companies in many less developed countries in the East to produce sports apparel. Some of the issues around the allegations of using sweatshops labour revolved around overtime, child labour, holiday and vacation and working conditions.
In order to counter the damage to its corporate image Nike conducted a public relations campaign using speeches and press releases, and even hired an independent consulting company chaired by the former American ambassador to the United States to monitor environmental and labour conditions at its producers around the world. In spite of the concerted effort by Nike, there still remains doubt in many consumers' minds as to whether Nike products are made in sweatshop conditions.
Do you think that Nike should have the public relations function as a self-standing concept or should it fit under another business function?
Why is it important for Nike to perform the public relations task?
If Nike again got accused of using swear labour overseas, how would it best approach the regaining of its brand reputation?
What type of activities would you recommend Nike follow to counteract ant other competitive activities?
How could Nike ensure that it follows more socially responsible agenda?