Data Base Management System

an Introduction and history

Our study case: Hotel Bincker's

In the last few years Hotel Bincker's has grown from a small village hostel into a

medium sized business hotel in a rapidly growing small silicon village town. And

the desk has no time to keep track of all information needed to take care of its

guests in a proper way. "We are a hotel not an airline!" is vaguely muttered by

the manager after he lost your name again, did not cross off the room on his

blackboard and booked the same room twice.

But after management communicated its concern with losing clients, the manager

promises to clean up his act.

Some weeks later when you show up at Hotel Bincker's desk the manager will

finger through his agenda which is ordered by date and he will find your

reservation. This method works well for a small hotel. Guests are coming back

and the hotel's business is profitable again.

Hotel Bincker''s agenda and room reservation "database"

But after some years, Hotel Bincker's has grown again. Now it is a larger hotel

with some 100 rooms and the manager is still using an agenda for each floor, and

then history repeats: your name is lost. The manager needs many minutes to find

what room is available. It is obvious that any (paper) agenda would be too small
 to schedule over 100 rooms. Hotel Bincker's is losing its clientele again. This time

the manager cannot rescue the situation with a simple agenda anymore. He starts

complaining to his wife and kids, who start to show him their electronic agendas

with all their gadgetry. Now that's an idea! Still having his old faithful agenda and

keeping track of reservations electronically. But within a day running the hotel's

administration on a small PDA proves to be a useless exercise. The solution is

found but something bigger is needed. The need, however, for an electronic

version of a combined agenda and guest list is confirmed by the manager’s little

test case.

So the manager’s daughter Lisa starts browsing the Internet and finds out that a

hotel reservation system would be the answer to her dad's problem. Together

they start contacting companies that sell or create reservation systems. But for a

small hotel like Bincker's with its specific services, no off-the-shelf system seems

to be available or affordable. The step from paper agenda to a full blown

computerized hotel reservation system is too big for the hotel's management and

does not match with the hotel's business culture.

But Lisa learned a lot while browsing the Internet and she starts explaining to her

dad how a system like that would work and what such a system can do for his

business. Above all, she explained how to plan such a project.

Here is how Lisa started to explain to her dad how to proceed:

Imagine that a hotel is nothing else than a collection of rooms and, like any

collection, we need to have some form of registration. Keeping track of rooms in

an orderly way can be with a list:

Rooms 20 DEC 10:11

Name First Gender Out Room Smoker

        101 N

        102 N

        103 Y

        104 Y

        206 N
         208 N

        302 Y

        303 N

A guest can be entered in that list when he or she arrives at the hotel:

Occupancy list 20 Dec 10:11

Name First Gender Out Room Smoker

Dijkstra Jan M Y 101 N

Romero Paolo M Y 104 N

Rubnes Jetro M Y 201 Y

Voloute Maria F N 299 Y

Xantia Citon F N 300 Y

Zeppelin Ger M N 301 Y

In case we are out of vacancies we can contact our guests via our address list:

Names and Addresses

Name First Phone Gender Pet Vegetarian Smoker

Dijkstra Jan 31 44 345 3666 M   Y N

Romer Paolo 123 4523 3509 M Pietro N N

o

Rubnes Jetro 101 4403 2226 M Vlato N Y

Volout Mari 404 2396 2350 F   N Y

e a

Lisa continues:

The above examples show you how a simple list of rooms and persons gets rid of the

misplaced papers. Names and rooms are shown in a particular order, in this case
alphabetically, so you can quickly find what you are looking for. These examples are

already a small database, see? But remember a database can have any physical

form: paper, on a blackboard, an electronic file, or even some tally sticks. (a very early

form of some kind of registration in 1310)

tally sticks

The lists we have here can be put on a computer in a word processor document or

some tabular sheet like a spreadsheet. These are called files. It is possible to

combine those two in any way, already a sort of database. The difference between

a database and a file is that there is something extra to it. A database must

contain a method, amongst other things, to look up something. Comparable to

the databases used by search engines like Google, Alta Vista, or Yahoo that we

use to find companies which could sell us a reservation system. The Internet is

also some kind of database. And all this information is managed by a database

management system, hence DBMS.

Case study: Hotel Bincker

“Our biggest problem is to find rooms that are vacant and the ones that are

occupied,” says Lisa. Below I have drawn an example listing for vacancies that

can be called with one click of a button:

Here is part of the rooms list with guests who reserved a room for the 20th of

December

Here is part of the rooms list with guests who reserved a room for the 20th of

December
Name First Address Notes Phone Gender Pet Vegetarian Smoker  

Dijkstra Jan 14 Yes 31 44 M   Y N  

Pinkerton 345
lane 3666
Deloit,
1234DE
Delaware
USA

Romero Paolo Plz de 5 No 123 M Pietro N N

Mayo 123 4523
4325-23 3509
Roma
Italy

Rubnes Jetro 123 Pole Yes 101 M Vlato N N

23 4403
Deliver to 2226
mailoffice
San
Remaro
Trinidad

Voloute Maria 12 rue de No 404 F   N Y

la liberte 2396
Auxerre 2350
120394
France

When our desk manager wants to have a quick view when a room becomes
available, or for that matter occupied rooms, he calls up his agenda in the form of

a chart:
This chart is color coded, blue is a guest, green is available, purple are

reservations, yellow is a national holiday or other special day; mostly meaning

prices go up. When our front desk manager wants more specifics he can open a

sub window to search for a room (in all possible combinations: adjacent rooms,

smoke free, etc.)

Or use the more advanced form of a floor plan:

Our front desk manager will have an instant overview of all available rooms and

their configuration.
“That,” concludes Lisa, “is all we need.” Not a complicated system like the Hilton

has, but one that offers you the information you need with one click of a button.

And one where we can put in the information we have on our guests habits and

likes or dislikes.

“So,” asks her dad, “how would we go ahead? What do we need? A scientist? It

must be a system that we can maintain by ourselves with no need for expensive

consultants with little knowledge of our business.”

And Lisa answers: “You know, dad; we just happen to have an assignment in our

class that just covers your need.”

Instantly a broad grin plays on Dad’s lips. “OK,” he says, “let's see if we can be of

mutual benefit to each other.”

So now you have some idea of how most automation projects start: from a

certain need and/or a fear of losing business.

Continue to the next chapter where I will introduce some methods and techniques

used to analyze information.