Huffman Trucking: Database Design and Development
Running head: HUFFMAN TRUCKING
Huffman Trucking: Database Design and Development Huffman Trucking started out as a single owner, single truck and trailer, operating in the Cleveland Ohio area back in 1936 doing local contract hauls. Today, Huffman Trucking is a National carrier with 1,400 employees, 800 tractors, 2,100 trailers, and 260 roll-on/roll-off units, operating from 3 logistical hubs located in Los Angeles, California, St. Louis, Missouri, and Bayonne, New Jersey and its central maintenance facility located in Cleveland Ohio (Apollo Group Inc., 2005). With the growth through the years, Huffman Trucking has maintained their competitiveness by being an industry leader in leveraging technology to the maximum to provide customer service and business efficiencies (Apollo Group Inc., 2005). In the means to maintain this competitiveness, Huffman Trucking hired Smith Systems Consulting to develop a report of entities and attributes that will be needed for a Fleet Truck Maintenance Database. Upon receipt of Smith’s report detailing the entities and attributes needed, our IT Manager submitted a Service Request SR-ht-003 to design a Fleet Truck Maintenance Database. In the following paragraphs LTA will discuss the database architecture briefly and primary keys, which play a vital role in an Entity-Relational Database. The discussions of the different types of mistakes that are made in the design phase that led to a poor database design are also discussed. Mistakes include the lack of careful planning, proper normalization of data, poor naming conventions, lack of sufficient documentation and extensive testing. The ERD for the database will be revealed along with the choice of the program to manage the database and allow for versatility for various platforms, applications, and features. Huffman Trucking’s fleet truck maintenance records are fairly straight-forward, therefore, a basic database design architecture is
Huffman Trucking: Database Design and Development Huffman Trucking started out as a single owner, single truck and trailer, operating in the Cleveland Ohio area back in 1936 doing local contract hauls. Today, Huffman Trucking is a National carrier with 1,400 employees, 800 tractors, 2,100 trailers, and 260 roll-on/roll-off units, operating from 3 logistical hubs located in Los Angeles, California, St. Louis, Missouri, and Bayonne, New Jersey and its central maintenance facility located in Cleveland Ohio (Apollo Group Inc., 2005). With the growth through the years, Huffman Trucking has maintained their competitiveness by being an industry leader in leveraging technology to the maximum to provide customer service and business efficiencies (Apollo Group Inc., 2005). In the means to maintain this competitiveness, Huffman Trucking hired Smith Systems Consulting to develop a report of entities and attributes that will be needed for a Fleet Truck Maintenance Database. Upon receipt of Smith’s report detailing the entities and attributes needed, our IT Manager submitted a Service Request SR-ht-003 to design a Fleet Truck Maintenance Database. In the following paragraphs LTA will discuss the database architecture briefly and primary keys, which play a vital role in an Entity-Relational Database. The discussions of the different types of mistakes that are made in the design phase that led to a poor database design are also discussed. Mistakes include the lack of careful planning, proper normalization of data, poor naming conventions, lack of sufficient documentation and extensive testing. The ERD for the database will be revealed along with the choice of the program to manage the database and allow for versatility for various platforms, applications, and features. Huffman Trucking’s fleet truck maintenance records are fairly straight-forward, therefore, a basic database design architecture is
References: Apollo Group Inc. (2005). Huffman Trucking. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from Huffman Trucking Intranet: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Huffman/HuffmanHome002.htm Davidson L., (2007). Ten Common Database Design Mistakes. Simple-Talk.com. Retrieved September 29, 2008, from http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/ten-common-database-design-mistakes/ Malone M, (2007). I 'm Mike. Database Design: Choosing A Primary Key. Retrieved October 1, 2008, from http://immike.net/blog/2007/08/14/database-design-choosing-a-primary-key/