Case Study: ACME Generators

SCENARIO

ESSENCE OF THE CASE

Here are the essential points in this case:

• Distributed environment

• Heterogeneous data sources

• Ability to integrate with IIS

• Data replication

ACME Generators manufactures small electronic motors for use in a variety of mechanical devices. It is a medium- sized company of 150 employees with a manufacturing plant in Idaho and sales offices in Michigan, California, and Brazil. They require a database server to store all company data, provide access to data in sources across multiple platforms, and provide for front-end applications that will later be developed in Visual Basic and web applications developed for use on an IIS Server.

The software chosen must be able to handle data replication to and from the sales offices while maintaining ongoing updates from a fully automated manufacturing floor. Procedures will be updated to include information coming in from monitoring equipment that reports at various points during the manufacturing process.

The company executives have been looking into Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and would like to get information on how suitable it would be for the tasks . What are some of the features available in SQL Server that are suited to this deployment?

ANALYSIS

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 would be an excellent software choice in this situation. It handles well in a distributed environment so that all offices can gain access to the data they need.

SQL Server has many tools for interoperating in a heterogeneous environment that has multiple vendors and database products. SQL Server uses ODBC and OLE-DB functionality to gain access to virtually any data stored anywhere .

SQL Server makes an excellent back-end database server for an Internet or intranet site. SQL Server and IIS integrate well to make data accessible over the Internet in a number of formats, including XML, HTML, and ADO.

With SQL Server replication, data can be transferred quickly and flexibly from one server to another. Options are available to maintain updateable copies at all locations if desired.