CASE STUDY 1: BUYING GLASSES SYSTEM
 
A person is to see an eye doctor who will give his/her a prescription. Once the person gets a prescription, he/she goes to an optical store, where the person selects his/her frames and places the order for his/her glasses. Once the glasses have been made, the person returns to the store for a fitting and pay for the glasses.
 
 
CASE STUDY 2: DENTIST SYSTEM
 
Whenever new patients visit a local dentist clinic first time, the nurse opens an electronic patient information form and lets the patient complete the form with their name, address, phone number, and brief medical history. which are stored in the patient information file. When a patient calls to schedule a new appointment or change an existing appointment, the nurse checks the appointment file for an available time. Once a good time is found for the patient, the nurse schedules an appointment and tells the patient with the appointment detail. In the meantime, if a patient is a new patient who never visits the dentist clinic before, the nurse makes an incomplete entry for the patient information form and stores the form. When the new patient comes for the appointment the nurse gets the stored patient information form of the patient. The patient fills the form with the full information. The nurse stores the updated form. Because appointments are often made far in advance, the nurse usually mails a reminder postcard to each patient two weeks before the appointment.
 
 
CASE STUDY 3: PAISLEY ANTIQUARIAN BOOK CLUB (PABC) SYSTEM
 
The PABC stores a number of books that can be borrowed by its members. At the moment the club deals with loans, returns and reservations of the books in a manual system that is not efficient. The club requires a new computerized PABC system in replacement of the current system, in order to provide more effective services.  In the new system, all membership cards and books stored are bar coded so that a scanning machine integrated with the new PABC system can support borrows, returns and reservations of the books. The system records all details of a new member (e.g., name, address, telephone number, start date, expire date) when a new membership card is issued to that member. It also records the details of books (e.g., title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication year) when purchased.
 
The member who wishes to borrow a book picks the book from the bookshelves. He/she needs to present his/her membership card to the librarian each time they wish to borrow a book. The Librarian uses the scanning machine to read the card. The book will be issued for the member if the system accepts the card. The librarian will then stamp the book with the return date before giving it to the member. The book borrowed will be also read by the scanning machine so that the loan details (e.g., issue date, borrower’s details, book’s details, its return date) can be recorded in the PABC system. The membership card will be then returned to the member together with the book issued.
 
A book is requested for return before return date only if reserved by another member. When a member reserves a book, he/she needs to present the librarian his/her membership card and provides details of the book (e.g., title and author) to be reserved. The librarian uses the scanning machine to read the card. The reservation will be carried out if the system accepts the card. The librarian then needs to enter the book details for the reservation. The system will add the new reservation with information (e.g., member details, current date, book detail) to the list of reservations kept in the system if the book is stored by the club and has been borrowed by another member. The reservation list is scanned weekly by the system to generate return requests (to the member who has borrowed the book). When a book is returned, either as a result of a return request or when the borrower has finished with it, the reservations list is scanned again and if the book has been reserved an availability notification is sent to the appropriate member.
 
A book is scanned using the scanning machine for validation when returned. If it is returned late, the member will receive a fine notice. His/her membership will be suspended until the fine has been paid. The membership will be cancelled if the fine is not paid within two weeks.
 
The club may store more than one copy for the books that are requested very often. In this case, different copy numbers are used for distinguishing between copies of the same book.
 
 
CASE STUDY 4: BOOK TRADER SYSTEM
 
The book trader company is concerned with selling books by advertising in magazines. Each advertisement is placed in one magazine on a given date, and includes a number of books described by their titles, authors and publisher, together with the price at which the company is offering each book.
 
A potential customer can buy one or more of the advertised books by mailing the company an order with their name and address and phone number, the title and the quantity of each of the books to order, and the total cost of the order. A payment is required when ordering books, either by including a cheque for the total amount due, or by giving a credit card number, its holder’s name and expire date.  An alternative way of buying books is to telephone the company and give the same order details, but in this case a credit card must be used for payment.  The company then waits till the payment process is completed. If the payment is rejected, the company rejects the order. Otherwise, the company produces a receipt and send it to the warehouse that can dispatch books to customers.
 
The business has been expanded rapidly recently from hundreds of customers to thousands of customers. The company found that they could not run the business efficiently in a manual system. They are now demanding an information system with IT to support and improve the business. The new system will store all details of sales, advertisements, and so on in computer. For example, the unique ISBN for each book is recorded, together with its title, the names of its authors, the name of its publisher, its price and its current stock level (i.e. the number of copies of the book in the company's warehouse).  For each advertisement, the name of the magazine in which it appears and the date of the issue is recorded, as well as the list of books. Each order is assigned a distinguishing order number and details are recorded of the customer, the date, the books required, the total cost and a credit card number if that is the chosen method of payment.  Customer details include their name, address and phone number.
 
In addition, the new system is required to support the above business activities, together with two kinds of enquiry. One enquiry requests the number of orders resulting from a given advertisement. The other enquiry requests details of the progress of a specific order (e.g. Are the books available? Have they been sent?). Identifying the order by giving either an order number or the details of the customer and the advert to which they responded.