Each dealership manages its data processing resources and procedures as a stand-alone enterprise. Spiffy Corporation requires that each dealership have one or more iSeries™ servers and that those servers must be available to the network at certain times. However, the size of the server and the number of business processes that are automated on it are determined by each dealership's needs and the resources available to it.
The Spiffy Corporation requires all dealerships to be active in the inventory distributed relational database. Because the corporation operates its own dealerships, it has a full complement of dealership software that might or might not access the distributed relational database environment. The Spiffy dealerships use the full set of software tools. Most of the private franchises also use them because they are tailored specifically to the Spiffy Corporation way of doing business.
The regional distribution centers manage the inventory for their region. They also function as the database administrator for all distributed database resources used in the region. The responsibilities involved vary depending on the level of data processing competency at each dealership. The regional center is always the first contact for help for any dealership in the region.
The Minneapolis regional distribution center has a staff of iSeries programmers with a wide range of experience and knowledge about the servers and the network. The dealership load is about one half that of other regional centers to allow this center to focus on network-wide iSeries support functions. These functions include application program development, program maintenance, and problem handling.
Listed here are the database responsibilities for each level of activity in the network:
In addition to the regional distribution center activities, the Minneapolis iSeries server competency center does the following activities:
Examples used throughout this topic are associated with one or more of these activities. Many examples show the process of obtaining a part from inventory in order to schedule customer service or repairs. Others show distributed relational database administration tasks used to set up, secure, monitor, and resolve problems for servers in the Spiffy Corporation distributed relational database network.