Case Study: Dave s Video Rental Chain

Case Study: Dave's Video Rental Chain

SCENARIO

ESSENCE OF THE CASE

• DRV is a video rental firm.

• They have multiple branches but have difficulty knowing which video is available at which store at any given time.

• They have to implement a solution soon, before they become extremely inefficient.

• The multiple branches need, but do not have access to, each other's inventory. Additionally, near real-time information is required. These two requirements are what lead to the decision to use transactional replication rather than the other types.

Dave's Video Rental is a firm created and owned by Dave Stuart that rents and sells videos . Included in their rentals are video games , historical films , video accessories, and movies. Dave's Video Rental had been a single branch for almost two years . The company expanded business six months ago by creating three new branches located in different parts of the city. "The problem occurs when a certain video is not available, and we have to find out which of our stores currently has it," says one of the employees at DRV. Lengthy phone calls are made to each of the three other stores just to confirm the availability of a single item. "Our efficiency is decreasing and so are our sales. If we don't correct this problem soon, we're going to go down real bad," says Dave, owner of DRV. He hires you to investigate the situation and come up with a solution.

ANALYSIS

A situation like this most obviously requires data to be put in a central location or that the same data be accessible to all the branches. This scenario is perfect for replication because the currently available videos need to be known by all branches so that they can save long time-consuming telephone calls and just locate the available titles in an online database. The recommended configuration would be Multiple Publishers/Multiple Subscribers because all machines need the same copy of the data. Transactional replication is a good solution when you want updated changes at the server in almost real-time.