Database Systems Course NMIMS Summer/Fall 2021

Final Project
Business Scenario:
Two children started a lemonade stand to earn some extra money at a local country club/golf
course over the summer (June, July, and August). The golf course is open every day (weather
permitting) except Mondays. The golf course built a lemonade stand structure with an ice-
making machine and secure storing of inventory. Then, the golf course signed an agreement
allowing the children to operate the lemonade stand on the golf course for a rental fee of 5% of
sales. In the agreement, the golf course provides electricity and water (for their computer and ice
machine).
The children were excited to offer 19 flavors of lemonade. They purchase the lemonade in
individual containers (12 ounce cans) from the local grocery store. For weekdays (Tuesday
through Friday), one child works for a fixed wage ($75 per day). On Saturday and Sunday, two
children are scheduled to work each earning a fixed wage ($75 each per day).
One of the children has a parent who had recently gone back to school at the time the children
were starting the Lemonade Stand and was taking a database course. One of the assignments for
the course was to design a database. In order to complete the assignment and help the children,
she offered to design a database so they could keep track of inventory and sales.
To track sales by employee, she designed an invoice for the children to enter sales (see Figure 1
below). They would like to be able to track sales by employee. They would also like to be able to
track contact information (name, phone, address, city) for each employee.
The sales are recorded at the time of purchase. For each sale, the employee enters the member
number, flavor(s), and the quantity of each flavor for the sale. A paper sales receipt is signed by
the member to acknowledge receipt of the goods and kept on file. The country club/golf course
has members (these members are customers of the lemonade stand) who have a membership card
that works similar to a credit card for purchases at the club house, pro shop, and at the lemonade
stand. The members are billed at the end of the month for purchases that month. Therefore, the
lemonade stand must submit a monthly report detailing sales to each member to the club. The
members remit a check directly to the lemonade stand.
Cash receipts are recorded by an employee when the payments are received. The record of
receipt includes the date, employee ID, amount of the check, which bank account the check will
be deposited in, the golf course id (only one location at the current time, but they hope to grow
their business), and the member ID.
They would also like to track information about customers (members) including name, phone,
address, city.
Right now, they only have one lemonade stand, but in the future, they hope to expand operations
to other golf courses. As such, they would also like to track information about each location for
the lemonade stand. Specifically, they would like to track the name of the golf course on which
the lemonade stand is located, the address of the golf course, and the name and phone number for
the person in charge of the golf course.

Figure 1: Example form

Every Monday, the children’s parent takes them to the grocery store to purchase their inventory.
Currently, the children mentally estimate both the items and quantity of inventory needed (create
a grocery list). As needed, they buy cups and paper towels. The weekly grocery bill is paid by
the parent. The trip to the store causes some frustration for the parent as the trip typically
includes a long wait while the children decide what and how much to buy. At the end of the
month, the children pay their parent for the sum of the month’s purchases of inventory and
provide a list of total sales and cash receipts recorded/deposited for the month.
Part 1: Understand the business from a narrative description
Reflecting on the above business scenario, demonstrate an understanding of the business
processes and reporting needs of the business both internally and externally by answering the
following thought questions.
1) What are the reports specifically required of the system?
2) What reports would management want to have from this system?
Part 2: Database Normalization and setup in Microsoft Access
1) Create an ER model for this business situation. Your model should include only entities
and relationships, no attributes. Please use Crow’s feet notation.
2) Based on the narrative given, you are required to implement a database that satisfies the
above requirements using Microsoft Access.
3) Create a data dictionary for your ER model in a separate Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. All
attributes including keys and foreign keys must be identified. Use these naming
conventions for tables and attributes in your data dictionary. Entity names should match
problem the domain and be understandable to users of the system. Attributes uses as keys
or foreign keys being with c_, other attributes begin with letters that indicate their data
type including, t_ for text d_ for date, n_ for numbers with decimal places, i_for integers,
b_ for boolean, etc. Attributes should also have a two character suffix derived from the
table name, e.g., _cu for a customer table. The primary key of the customer table would
be something like c_customer_cu, the date of first order by the customer might by
d_firstOrder_cu, and the current balance would be n_currentBalance_cu. I have included
a sample data dictionary.
4) Add at least ten fictional (and appropriate) records to each table in the Microsoft Access
database.

Part 3 - Understand the database structure

Using the solution ERD with the data provided, answer questions about where and how we can
extract data/information from the system.
Which tables would you find the data needed to answer the following questions?
1) How many members/customers does the lemonade stand serve?
2) How many flavors of inventory are there? What are the names of the inventory items?
3) Based on the tables, do you think all lemonade sells for the same price? Why?
4) Does the system allow for discounts? For example, do high volume customers receive
discounts?
5) Will the system allow the business to expand to multiple locations?
Part 4 – SQL to answer business questions
Develop queries to answer the following business questions. Save the queries in the format
“qry_Question#” for example, the first query would be saved as “qry_Question1”.
 1) The children would like to be able to look up and quickly find a member’s number. List
all members’ first and last names, member ID number, and order them alphabetically by
last name (Lname).
2) How many (count of) cash receipts were received in August 2013?
3) What was the total cash received in August 2013?
4) What was the total cash received for the entire year of 2013?
5) How many flavors of inventory are in stock?
6) List inventory flavors on-hand from highest to lowest.
7) What are the total sales in dollars for the company for the month of June 2013?
8) What are the total sales in dollars for the company for the entire year of 2013?
9) What amount was sold to each member for the month of June 2013 (list from the highest
to lowest amount)?
10) What were the cash receipts from Members in July 2013 (presumably for June sales) (list
from the highest to lowest amount)?
11) What is the balance owed by each Member (Accounts Receivable balance) at July 31,
2013 (before billing for July) (list from the highest to lowest balance)?
12) What is the 2015 ending Acct. Rec. balance for every member listing the highest first?
13) Who is the best customer by volume (display only the best customer)?
14) How much did we sell (qty and $) of each product in June 2013?
15) What were the top 3 flavors in units sold for the month of June 2013?
16) What were the 3 lowest flavors in units sold (and list those not sold)?
17) Are there any members who have not purchased any lemonade? If so, list their name(s).
18) List the total sales units and dollars by shift (employee) (for all 3 years).
19) List the daily sales units and dollars (for all 3 years).
20) List the minimum, maximum, and average daily sales by employee.
Part 5: Application Development in Microsoft Access
Part 5a: Sales data entry form
Develop a form in Microsoft Access for users to enter in sales invoices. Your form should appear
like Figure 2 below:
 Figure 2: Sales Invoice form
Part 5b: Report in Microsoft Access. Develop a report in Microsoft Access that shows the
Accounts Receivable balance by customer at September 2015. Your report should appear like
Figure 3 below:
 Figure 3
Part 6-Basic data analytics
Part 6a: Clean and import external data (weather data).
Table1 below shows some descriptive statistics of the children’s’ performance. EID 1 represents
one child working Tuesday/Thursday alone, EID 2 represents one child working
Wednesday/Friday alone, and EID3 represents both children working together on the weekends.

Answer the following thought questions.

1) What possible explanations might exist that lead to the variability in sales for each shift?
2) How might daily events/tournaments/weather impact sales?
The owners of the lemonade stand want to know if weather affects daily sales. Many items like
temperature, rain, or even cloud cover could influence sales. This knowledge is important for
sales forecasting and budgeting purposes. For example, knowing that cloudy weather decreases
sales would help the owners determine how much lemonade to purchase for resale.
In order to determine if weather affects sales, perform the following steps:
1 Acquire external data (weather). In practice, similar to what was pulled from the National
Weather Service, data typically requires making sure we understand what is provided and that it
is in a format usable for our purpose.
2) Open the Excel “weather” file and become familiar with the data (See Table 2).
3) In practice, data files typically need to be cleaned before use. The weather file has several
issues that need to be addressed before the data can be used. First, the date column is in numeric
format. Second, rainfall has a “T” for a trace of rain.
a) Date column issue: the number (ex. 10613 = 1st day of June, 2013) will not be read by
Excel or Access as the desired date. If we use the Excel cell format to change from
numeric (general) to a date format, it will incorrectly change the date to 01-29-1929. To
fix the date column, we suggest inserting a column. Title the column heading in row 1
(“date”), and then set the format of rows 2, 3, and 4 to date (ex. 3/14/2013). Then, in rows
2, 3, and 4 of that column, type 06/01/2013, 06/02/2013, and 06/03/2013 respectively.
Highlight those three cells and place your cursor at the bottom right of row 4 cell. Then,
click and hold the left mouse button and drag down slowly to the end of the August 2013.
Repeat for 2014 and 2015 summer dates.
b) For the rainfall (WTR) column, scroll down the column and replace all “T” values
with .01. (The “replace” command can be used for this step. Alternatively, a student
could write a formula to convert.)
c) Note the WX column identifies special weather events. See coding in Figure 4. In the
data the most common are 1, 2, 3 and 8. If a day has a 138, the weather service noted 1 =
fog, 3 = thunder, and 8 = haze. If a person wants to compare weather features to sales, the
coding would need to be split into multiple columns. (This is not needed for our
analysis.)

After cleaning the weather data, the weather data in your spreadsheet should appear like Figure
4:

Figure 4: Cleaned weather data

4. Save the spreadsheet for importing into MS-Access, and close the file. In MS Access, import
the external data file from Microsoft Excel. Allow Access to assign the primary key.

5) Perform a query to match the daily weather data to the daily sales data.:
a. Create a query that includes total daily sales ($ and units)
b. Create a query using a “daily sales query” and the “weather table” joined on date.
c. The query should have sales data and weather data for all days the business was open
for all three years.
6) Extract your query in part 6a to a spreadsheet.
Part 6b: Correlation analysis
This deliverable requires you to conduct a correlation based on the sales weather spreadsheet you
created in step 6a. The following steps are required for this case:
1) Rename your worksheet with your sales and weather data to “SourceData”.
2) Copy the data to another spreadsheet tab and rename this tab “DataforAnalysis”. You
need to arrange the data on this tab so that the data appear like Figure 5. You can arrange
the data manually or you could use a pivot table. To use a pivot table in Excel:
a. Create a pivot table as prep for the correlation analysis.
b. Insert the pivot table on a separate worksheet labeled “DataforAnalysis”. Once
you have created your pivot table, EditPaste special values. You can also
complete this step without a pivot table by removing certain fields from your
source data (Qty for example). Your pivot table should look like Figure 5:

Figure 5: Data ready for correlation analysis

 3) Create a correlation matrix using the data analysis toolpack and save this matrix on a
separate worksheet. Use conditional formatting (color scales) to highlight the
correlations. Your correlation matrix should appear as shown in Figure 6:

Figure 6: Sample Correlation

4) Using the correlation analysis in figure 6, which variables do you think would best
predict price? Why?
Part 7-Presentation
1) Develop a presentation using PowerPoint (or other software) that addresses the following.
You will present to the class virtually on either October 12th or October 14th.
2) Your presentation should be NO longer than 10 minutes (allow 5 minutes for questions)
and should address the following points:
a. Provide an overview of the business scenario
b. Using the information provided by the queries in parts 3 and 4, provide an analysis of
how well the lemonade stand is performing. Your analysis should answer the
following questions:
i. How good are sales and cash receipts for 2013?
ii. Is the lemonade stand doing a good job collecting cash on their sales? Why is
this an issue the lemonade stand needs to think about?
iii. Which lemonade flavors should the lemonade stand focus on in the future?
Are there some flavors that maybe they shouldn’t sell anymore?
iv. Which employees appear to generate the most sales? What about the least
sales?
 v. What is the effect of weather on sales? How does understanding the effect of
weather on sales improve our understanding of the business?
vi. Who are the lemonade stand’s best customers? Who are the worst customers?
How should the lemonade stand use this knowledge?
vii. Can you think of any IT security or control risks that exist in the database or
the sales process? Would there be ways for employees to steal inventory
using the database for example?
c. Demonstrate your form and sample report (part 5).
Deadline for project: October 11th 2021. Answers to questions in part 1 in a document
(e.g., Microssoft Word document)
1) ER model for part 2.
2) Microsoft Access database with sample records.
3) Data dictionary in a spreadsheet (e.g., Microsoft Excel)
4) Microsoft Access database with queries for parts 3 and 4.
5) Microsoft Access database with sample form and report for part 5.
6) Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with cleaned weather data (part 6). The cleaned
weather data should also be imported into your Microsoft Access database (part 6a)
7) Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with correlation analysis (part 6b).
8) Microsoft PowerPoint presentation addressing part 7.

References:
This case is based on the following:
Schafer, B., and Bee, S. (2018). The Lemonade Stand: An Elementary Case for Introducing Data
Analytics. AIS Educator Journal. Volume 13, Number 1, pages 30-43.