Page 137 - Accounting Information Systems

108 PART I Overview of Accounting Information Systems

PROBLEM 19: CODING SCHEME (continued)

WAREHOUSE LAYOUT

Each aisle is separated into a right and left side, with 7 shelves of goods and 17 partitions, with
each storage area called a “bin.”

7
6
5

4
3
2
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Legacy Systems Problems

20. ACCESS METHODS accounts, one check per month is received. These
receipts are recorded in a batch file, and the cus-
For each of the following file processing operations,
tomer account records are updated biweekly. In a
indicate whether a sequential file, indexed random file,
typical month, customer inquiries are received at the
virtual storage access method, hashing, or pointer struc- rate of about 20 per day.
ture would work best. You may choose as many as you
b. A national credit card agency has 12 million
wish for each step. Also indicate which would perform
customer accounts. On average, 30 million pur-
the least optimally. chases and 700,000 receipts of payments are pro-
cessed per day. Additionally, the customer support
a. Retrieve a record from the file based on its primary
key value. hotline provides information to approximately
150,000 credit card holders and 30,000 merchants
b. Update a record in the file.
per day.
c. Read a complete file of records.
c. An airline reservations system assumes that the
d. Find the next record in a file. traveler knows the departing city. From that
e. Insert a record into a file. point, fares and flight times are examined based
on the destination. When a flight is identified as
f. Delete a record from a file.
being acceptable to the traveler, the availability is
g. Scan a file for records with secondary keys. checked and, if necessary, a seat is reserved. The
volume of transactions exceeds one-half million
per day.
21. FILE ORGANIZATION d. A library system stocks over 2 million books and
For the following situations, indicate the most appropri- has 30,000 patrons. Each patron is allowed to check
out five books. On average, there are 1.3 copies of
ate type of file organization. Explain your choice.
each title in the library. Over 3,000 books are
a. A local utility company has 80,000 residential cus- checked out each day, with approximately the same
tomers and 10,000 commercial customers. The amount being returned daily. The checked-out books
monthly billings are staggered throughout the month are posted immediately, as well as any returns of
and, as a result, the cash receipts are fairly uniform overdue books by patrons who wish to pay their
throughout the month. For 99 percent of all fines.