Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Ridge concentrates on Northwest School artists, such as Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Guy
Anderson, and Paul Horiuchi, and produces shows of contemporary artists who work in the
Northwest School tradition or in Northwest Maritime art. The price of new reproduction
prints ranges up to $1,000, and prices for contemporary artists range from $500 to $10,000. The
price of art from the Northwest School artists varies considerably, depending on the artwork
itself. Small pencil, charcoal, or watercolor sketches may sell for as little as $2,000, whereas
major works can range from $10,000 to $100,000. Very occasionally, View Ridge may carry
Northwest School art priced up to $500,000, but art priced above $250,000 is more likely to be
sold at auction by a major art auction house.
View Ridge has been in business for 30 years and has one full-time owner, three salespeople,
and two workers who make frames, hang art in the gallery, and prepare artwork for shipment. View
Ridge holds openings and other gallery events to attract customers to the gallery. View Ridge owns
all of the art that it sells—even sales of contemporary artwork is treated as a purchase by View
Ridge that then is resold to a customer. View Ridge does not take items on a consignment basis.
The requirements for the View Ridge application are summarized in Figure 6-34. First,
both the owner and the salespeople want to keep track of customers' names, addresses,
phone numbers, and e-mail addresses. They also want to know which artists have appeal to
which customers. The salespeople use this information to determine whom to contact when
new art arrives and to personalize verbal and e-mail communications with their customers.
When the gallery purchases new art, data about the artist, the nature of the work, the
acquisition date, and the acquisition price are recorded. Also, on occasion, the gallery repur-
chases art from a customer and resells it, thus a work may appear in the gallery multiple times.
When art is repurchased, the artist and work data are not reentered, but the most recent
acquisition date and price are recorded. In addition, when art is sold, the purchase date, sales
price, and identity of the purchasing customer are stored in the database.
Salespeople want to examine past purchase data so they can devote more time to the
most active buyers. They also sometimes use the purchase records to identify the location of
artworks they have sold in the past.
For marketing purposes, View Ridge wants its database application to provide a list of
artists and works that have appeared in the gallery. The owner also would like to be able to de-
termine how fast an artist's work sells and at what sales margin. The database application also
should display current inventory on a Web page that customers can access via the Internet.
The View Ridge Gallery Data Model
Figure 6-35 shows a data model for the View Ridge database. This model has two strong enti-
ties: CUSTOMER and ARTIST. In addition, the entity WORK is ID-dependent on ARTIST, and
the entity TRANS is ID-dependent on WORK. There is also a nonidentifying relationship from
CUSTOMER to TRANS.
Figure 6-34
Summary of View
Ridge Gallery Database
Requirements
Summary of View Ridge Gallery Database Requirements
Track customers and their interest in specific artists
Record the gallery's purchases
Record customer's purchases
Report how fast an artist's works have sold and at what margin
Show the artists represented by the gallery on a Web page
Show current inventory on a Web page
Show all the works of art that have appeared in the gallery on Web pages
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