The scenario :-


Because this part of the course is very much a practical process I will ask you some initial questions, and then - depending on  your answers / performance of the tasks I have given you - I will either ask you another question, ask you the same one in a different way, or move on to the next set of questions.


I understand that getting enough marks to pass the course is very important to you, but hopefully you are doing this particular one because you have an interest in it and hope to gain practical skills from it which will help you obtain a job in the future, or help you develop your role in a current position.


So - I am more interested in helping you to end up giving me the right answer to tasks I set for you, than just marking your first answer as right or wrong. (But if you keep getting it wrong, I will move on.)


For this assignment you are to consider yourself as a person who has just been employed by a company which has been set-up fairly recently (it is pretty much still a start-up company, and does not have many resources) in order to supply IT services to small businesses (which do not have their own IT department - and do not wish to venture into that area). 

You have been employed in the position of software developer / systems admin, to write scripts / applications to configure your company's servers which provide mail, web and database services for the company's clients -

the company is hoping that you will be able to do pretty much any computer admin task they ask you to do!

You have come into a pre-exiting situation and find that the server for the task in hand has Linux installed, and the database being used is Oracle - about which you know very  little.

It turns out that the person from whom you have taken over gave your employers the impression that his skills were far greater than they turned out to be in practice - and, sadly, when he had to leave suddenly, he left very little documentation about what work he had done already to configure the database you now find yourself having to manage. So you have an existing Oracle instance to work with, but nothing has been done since the initial installation to configure it - and you must configure it appropriately before giving clients any access to it.Your company already has a prospective client - a business which imports specialist / unusual / hard-to-get gourmet food items into the country and acts as a distribution point for such items. Your job is to configure the database - which will be accessed by the client business (initially only by the office staff) - and to assist with advice and training for the relevant  employees.

(Eventually, if you do a good job, your company might win a contract to manage their inventory database, and provide online web access to the products the business offers.)

You know that an account can be provided for the client company on your company's computer systems, but you will have to provide advice on how the client's account should be configured in order for them to use your Oracle instance.

(The Software Architect for your firm (also called Cathy Chandra) can help you with setting up accounts if necessary.)

You have been given a file containing data for a table - which you could use for your client to experiment with, or you could make up your own table of data. The point of this is that you have some data in your database which your client can use to experiment with until she finds out how to create her own tables. The file is called chutney1.sql and it may be found in the 

/coursework/430/pickup/oracle_install directory on your server.


Successful interaction with the Admin. Assistant of the client company, and successful completion of the tasks she asks you to perform will be the basis on which you will be marked for this assignment.


You should work your way through the specifications given in the assignment pdf  -  http://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc430/Assignment2-DBA.pdf 

and send e-mail messages (where appropriate) when you are ready for each task you have completed to be marked. You will receive a response, giving you a mark if you have completed the task satisfactorily. or querying you further if you seem to have missed the point of the exercise.


You have received the following memo from your Managing Director, and will from now on interact directly with the Admin. Assistant of the client company (NZetti Co. Ltd.) from who you are expecting to receive an e-mail message late in the week starting Monday 17th March.


Internal   MEMO  -  13/03/2020


We have recently signed up to trial our newly offered online product management service. The necessary details of the Service Level Agreement have been worked out (thank you for your input), and we have been given some preliminary details of your contact person within the firm. We have also been given a test file which contains data for a table which you could load into your database, and give access to it to Cathy, so that she can experiment,

if you did not have an alternative of your own making.


Initially this will be their administrative assistant, Cathy Chandra (who by a strange coincidence has the same name as our company's  Software Architect), who has been designated as your sole point of contact within the firm.

She has some experience with computers, and is quite happy with the idea of testing our product.  She will be writing up her experiences for their office staff and the Purchasing Officer, who will also be using the system eventually.

Please provide Cathy with the necessary access to our database, and also provide her with a set of instructions for accessing the details of the product inventory and orders etc.


From this point, please interact directly with Cathy  - her e-mail address for this correspondence is nzetti_admin@cs.otago.ac.nz and she has asked that you use the word "NZetti" in the subject line of your e-mails.

You are to provide her with the help she needs, both to access the necessary data herself, and to assist with the instructions she is preparing (for other personnel in the firm to have their agreed access).


Please note that if this task is successfully completed, we expect our company to have an on-going and profitable relationship with NZetti.



Many Thanks,

John Smith,

Managing Director,

Inspired Systemnz Ltd