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System Design: Identification of Inputs, Processes, Outputs of a system (Exercise)
Many basic business operations/processes/activities, e.g.
withdrawal, deposit of money at an ATM,
sales payment using Octopus,
booking and payment of airline tickets and hotel rooms via the internet,
shopping on the internet, and payment of goods via internet e.g.Taobao.com, Amazon.com
can be automated by machines and/or computers as in business information systems.
In order to build such automatic systems, these systems need to be designed properly by IT people (who know IT and computer knowledge, but not much about businesses) and business people (who know business operations in sales, finance, inventory, but not much in IT and computer).
In designing these systems (see notes on design of system), the following need to be identified:
processes,
input data required for each process
output resulting data from each process
external entities who (or which) interact with any of processes
database or data stores
Question 1
In an ideal e-commerce order processing system, the following activities or operations take place:
The customer searches online the catalogue of products and selects items to buy.
Availability of these goods is checked against the inventory file.
If goods are available, the checked order is passed to accounts department where a credit card payment is requested from the bank.
If the bank confirms the payment, a confirmation of dispatch letter is sent back to the customer and the paid order is passed to the warehouse.
Draw a DFD for the above order processing system. These diagrams should identify the following:
three environmental elements that interact with this order processing system.
four main processes in this order processing system.
For each process, identify its input data/information and output data/information,
Any data stores for the input/output data/information
Question 2
Sales and payment of drinks/snacks (e.g. self-service vending machines) and train tickets (e.g. automatic ticketing machines in MTR) can be automatically performed by machines.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using machines of selling tickets and foodstuff?
What are the main external entities interacting with these machines?
What are the main processes in these machines?
What are the required data into each process and the resulting data from each process?
Question 3
Some fast food restaurants e.g. McDonald, Cafe De Coral (大家樂), Fairwood (大怏活) and dim sum restaurants are using digital systems to take customers’ meal orders, while many restaurants are still using paper, pen etc. to take customers’ meal orders.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using digital systems of taking meal orders?
What are the main external entities interacting with these digital systems?
What are the main processes in this digital system in completing a meal order?
What are the required data into each process and the resulting data from each process?
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