DATABASE CONTROL ISSUES: SECURITY, BACKUP AND RECOVERY, CONCURRENCY - Fundamentals of Database Management Systems - page 293

the front desk clerk receives information on their terminal
that allows them to say, ''Welcome back to Hilton, Mr.
Smith,'' or ''Welcome, Ms. Jones. I understand this is
your first visit to this hotel (or to Hilton Hotels).'' Both
the front desk clerk and the housekeeping staff also get
information on customer preferences and past complaints,
such as wanting a room with good water pressure and
not wanting a noisy room. Targeted customers such as
frequent guests might find fruit baskets, bottled water,
or bathrobes in their rooms. The system even prepares
personalized voice-mail greetings on the guest's in-room
telephone.
The system, uses an Informix DBMS on a Sun
Microsystems platform. The database contains both
current reservations information and guest history, making
it an interesting hybrid of a transaction processing
system and a data warehouse. The pending reservations
relation contains about two million records, while the
one-year ''stay summary'' contains 60 million records.
The database is shared for reservations, CRM, and other
purposes. In addition, some of the data is copied into
an offline data mart for marketing query purposes, using
SQL Server as the DBMS and SAS software. Some of the
data is organized in a classic data mart ''star schema''
arrangement using Epiphany software. In addition to
Hilton's access by its hotels and marketing staff, Hilton
provides its guests with access to their own records,
including their history data, through the Hilton web site.
''Photo Courtesy of Hilton Hotels''
DATA SECURITY
The Importance of Data Security
With data taking its place as a corporate resource and so much of today's business
dependent on data and the information systems that process it, good data security is
absolutely critical to every company and organization. A data security breach can
dramatically affect a company's ability to continue normal functioning. But even
beyond that, companies have a responsibility to protect data that often affects others
beyond the company itself. Customer data, which for example can be financial,
medical, or legal in nature, must be carefully guarded. When customers give a
company personal data they expect the company to be very careful to keep it
confidential. Banks must be sure that the money they hold, now in the form of data,
cannot be tampered with or leaked outside of the bank. Individuals want personal
information that insurance companies keep about them to remain confidential. Also,