International Data Issues — Exercise

Objective: Identify database fields and missing attributes that must be revised to support multilingual and international business data.

Exercise Scoring

This exercise is worth eight points. Identify at least four internationalization issues. For each issue, you can receive:

• One point for identifying the relevant field or missing attribute.
• One point for explaining the required modification.

Background and Overview

As part of the course project, you normalized the original data into four related tables. Stories on CD now plans to sell recordings in multiple languages and purchase products from distributors in countries outside the United States.

The current design contains assumptions about language, currency, postal addresses, telephone numbers, and geographic regions. These assumptions must be reviewed before the database can reliably store international data.

Relations

1. CD (CDNo, Title, DistID, Price, CategoryNo)
2. Distributor (DistID, DistName, DistStreet, DistSuite, DistCity, DistState, DistZip, DistPhone)
3. Order (OrderNo, OrderDate, CDNo, OrderCost, Received)
4. Category (CategoryNo, CategoryName)

Instructions

Identify at least four fields—or missing attributes—that require attention. For each one:

1. Name the relation and field.
2. Describe the international data problem.
3. Recommend an appropriate modification.

Consider multilingual text, international addresses, country identification, postal codes, telephone numbers, currencies, and time zones.