Bodgitt and Scarper, LLC. assignment - Database field name "size"

[Hari Krishna Varma Gadiraju]

Hi Ranchers,
I am new to this forum and have a question specific to my SCJD assignment.

My assignment is Bodgitt and Scarper, LLC. (a broker of home improvement contractors). The post seems to be a really big one (sorry for it).
Below is the schema definition give by Sun:

Field descriptive name Database field name Field length
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Subcontractor Name name 32
City location 64
Types of work performed specialties 64
Number of staff in organization size 6
Hourly charge rate 8
Customer holding this record owner 8

I understand that each row in the db file correspondis to a contractor.
Here is a statement from the assignment in the UI requirements section:

The user interface for this assignment must satisfy the following criteria:
-- It must allow the user to book a selected record, updating the database file accordingly.

What bothers me now is the database field size (Number of staff in organization).
When a CSR books a contractor,
1) do I need to get the input of the staff requirements for the work?
(say, the contactor has the staff size of 10, but the home improvement work for which CSR1 books this record reqiuires only 4 people. CSR2 can use the remaining staff for some other work)
(or)
2) do I need to block the entire record without even asking for such input?

Following are the problems that I foresee in any of the above choices:
Choice 1:
If I implement,this choice then I need to write the customer id of the CSR1 who first books the record (say 4 people required for the work) into the owner field. Since the only way to indicate a record being availale is through the owner field (being empty), how can I make this record being available (with remaining 6 staff memebers) for a CSR2?
Above all this, how can I track how much staff is being booked by a CSR?
All these problems prompt me to go by choice 2.
Choice 2: What is the use of the "size" database field then?
Is it sufficient if I document in design choices that the idea of using the size field for the purpose that I mentioned above has been considered, but dropped out due to the limitations in the schema definition itself? (or) Does sun ask me to make use of this field by the following statement in the UI requirements section?

Your user interface should be designed with the expectation of future functionality enhancements, and it should establish a framework that will support this with minimal disruption to the users when this occurs.

Appreciate your suggestions on this.
[ April 26, 2004: Message edited by: Hari Krishna Varma Gadiraju ]
[ April 26, 2004: Message edited by: Hari Krishna Varma Gadiraju ]

[Jacques Bosch]

Hi there.

1) do I need to get the input of the staff requirements for the work?
(say, the contactor has the staff size of 10, but the home improvement work for which CSR1 books this record reqiuires only 4 people. CSR2 can use the remaining staff for some other work)
(or)

It is safe to completely ignore this field, other than for displaying purposes. In fact, it is better to do so.
Hope that helps.
J

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Hi Hari,
Most people here seem to work with the assumption that the entire company gets booked - not individual employees from the company.
As long as you document that in your design decisions document, you should be fine.
If you really wanted to handle booking individual employees, you might be able to book the existing record, changing the number of employees, and create a new record with the remaining employees. It is not the way I would go though.
Regards, Andrew

[Hari Krishna Varma Gadiraju]

Jacques, thanks for the suggestion.
Andrew's quote:

If you really wanted to handle booking individual employees, you might be able to book the existing record, changing the number of employees, and create a new record with the remaining employees. It is not the way I would go though.

I believe, adding a new record with the left over staff will only complicate the things in terms of merging the records when no one uses this contractor, deleting the newly created records etc. If I would like to display the booked records also in my GUI, then duplicate rows will appear for this contractor except for the staff column.
Instead of going through all these complexities, I would prefer to ignore the field and document the same appropriately.
Will welcome the suggestions from other ranchers also.
Thanks,
Hari

[Jim Doyle]

The answer is no. You book the entire firm, because the requirements are that you
book the record, the whole record and only that record.
The purpose of the exam is to test your ability to fit requirements to implementation
while using best practices in OO Design and the features of the language. This is NOT a
case study in business analysis. If it were a case study in business analysis, you'd
be measured on maximizing profit, margin and utilization of all resources available.
You begin to see that the EFFORT required to automate certain processes is
non-trivial. In certain cases, the cost of automating these processes are only realized
for large economies of scale.
At the end of the day, the computer stores and retrieves information. It's up to you
to decide how to invest your time to maximize the abilities of the computers storage
and retrieval capabilities against the other needs for your time and ability.
-- Jim