Techarati, Inc. is a medium-sized computer retail sales company serving both individual and business customers. Based upon a discussion with the owner at Techarati, you have prepared the following summary of the Revenue Cycle Techarati sells computers to both individual and business customers. Customers send a Customer Order document to Techarati's Sales Department.
When a Customer Order is received, the Sales Department checks inventory availability via the inventory database. If the inventory to fill the order is not available, the Sales Department prepares a Backorder document (2 copies).
One copy is sent to the Purchasing Department and the other copy is filed alphabetically with the Customer Order in the Sales Department. If the inventory for the order is available, the Sales Department prepares a Sales Order (4 copies). One copy of the Sales Order is sent to the customer. One copy is filed alphabetically in the Sales Department with the Customer Order. The remaining two copies of the Sales Order are sent to the Warehouse.
In the Warehouse, one copy of the Sales Order serves as a picking ticket to release the stock and the other copy serves as a packing slip. A warehouse employee picks the goods and completes the order by shipping the order to the customer.
A copy of the Sales Order is included with the order as a packing slip. The Warehouse then prepares a Shipping Confirmation (2 copies) which is forwarded to the Billing Department and files one copy of the Shipping Confirmation in the Warehouse by date along with the Sales Order.
When the Billing Department receives the Shipping Confirmation, the inventory and accounts receivable database files are updated and an Invoice is generated (2 copies).
One copy of the Invoice is sent to the customer, while the other copy of the Invoice is filed in the Billing Department by customer name with the Shipping Confirmation. Additionally, a weekly AR Aging report is generated from the accounts receivable database and forwarded to the Controller.
Question:
Briefly describe the purpose of each level of the REA Ontology created in Part I.
What information is provided by each level of the model and how is it used in either database design or if not for what other purpose is it used?