ARRANGED BY:
Chan Elizabeth Wirawan (2201797001)
Marco Melvern (2201798351)
Michael Edward Baharutan (2201798124)
Naman Vohra (2201798420)
Project Details
Project Name: “Database for Pharmacy”
We are planning to build a database system for a pharmacy. Our team consists of four members which are Chan Elizabeth Wirawan, Marco Melvern, Michael Edward Baharutan, and Naman Vohra.
Problem Statement
We have proposed that the target for our database implementation is to a pharmacy owned by one of our member’s relatives, Michael, whose parents currently run a self-employed pharmacy. The pharmacy is called Elfata located in Palu, Central Sulawesi. It currently employs 4 people. Whom 3 are Assistant Pharmacist and 1 Pharmacist.
Currently, the pharmacy is using Microsoft Excel and conventional register books and logbooks as the method to store data and archives. This leads to inefficiency in cases that include searching, sorting, and security. With the advent of technologies and the assistance of our team’s proposed database, we can solve problems related to the points mentioned above, and introducing the database system to the management owners.
The first problem which the pharmacy is encountering is related to time. For example, it takes quite a while to search for drugs or medicines and to check for its availability. With the help of our proposed database system which works on MySQL query language, this task of searching can be done within seconds. In a traditional file system, one has to do searching sequentially and thus takes a long time especially when there are over thousands of records. Moreover, even though excel can execute simple queries, it can’t handle complex queries that may involve many fields/attributes.
Secondly, sorting also becomes easier to implement in the case where one wants to sort products according to date purchased. In a traditional file system, the employee must sort the data manually which results in a tedious process. Thus, this would simplify the difficulties in sorting and arranging stock within the pharmacy.
Thirdly, there might be some information that is considered sensitive or confidential and can only be accessed by specific people. The database system provides this feature of granting the user access to certain relations, operations, etc; the traditional file system does not provide the above feature.
Fourthly, the information in a traditional file system may be redundant as many files may contain the same data. Thus, another problem may arise as a result of the redundant data. This problem is called data inconsistency. Let’s consider the pharmacy has two files named A and B that are located at different locations. The files A and B contain the same set of data and two employees have access to files A and B respectively. If the first employee changes a particular data in file A and forgets to inform the second employee to change the same data in file B, then the data retrieved will be ambiguous as two different values will show up as a result. The employee retrieving this particular piece of data will be confused as to which value out of these two is the correct one. Thus, data redundancy and inconsistency can be solved by a database system as a database system is centralized and many users access the same database. In other words, data is not redundant and any changes made by one or more users will reflect in the database which is accessible by many users.
Fifth, our proposed database could help in decision making as well as increasing effectiveness and efficiency in running a pharmacy, such as determining which products sell more in recent dates or doesn’t sell as much, which would help the manager to decide which product to stock more, this will result in an improved business management.
Target User
Our team’s proposed database will be beneficial for pharmacies or any shops with similar information/data structure. It will be used by the manager and staff. The manager will have the authority to decide what information on the database will be available to which staff, depending on the information’s level of secrecy.
Here is an example of a real-life scenario regarding our concept of the database system:
In real life, our database would be used to aid the daily processes of the pharmacist and manager’s job. On the pharmacist side, when a customer asks for a certain drug containing paracetamol but the drug is unavailable, the Pharmacist could check the database for a similar drug that also contains paracetamol. It could also aid the pharmacist during regular stocking sessions to determine which batch of drugs is close to its expiry date, out of stock, or still have an abundance of supplies, allowing them to report to the manager. The manager would then be able to compare those data and determine which drugs to stock, how much to sell them or to contact the supplier. This would allow a smoother cycle compared to manual checking. In pharmacies, the pricing is usually done by the manager, our database could also be used to limit information about confidential data such as profits gained, taxes and pricing from the other staff, while still allowing the manager to grant access to another staff should it be necessary.
For more references about our concept of this database system, this link would help:
List of Relations
