Project Overview
Database Conversion and Consolidation
Introduction
Two City departments make use of two separate MS Access databases for handling payments to the City. These databases share a number of characteristics, and would benefit from being combined into a single database.
The IT department proposes combining the two MS Access databases into one MS SQL Server database, then reproducing the current MS Access human interfaces in a browser-based solution. The end product should not rely on MS Access for any functionality.
More Details
The City makes use of an MS Access database in the Legal department to handle fines owed to the City. This database is populated periodically from a different database called “ARMS,” where tickets are entered by police officers. Legal staff make updates to the database as fines are paid, and build reports from the database to take action on fines not paid.
Similarly, the City’s Finance department uses a different MS Access database to handle a number of payments owed to the City. Some of these payments are directly related to the Legal department’s collected fines.
The databases in Legal and Finance do not communicate with each other. If a fine is paid in the Legal department and recorded in Legal’s database, that payment is not immediately apparent to those in Finance using Finance’s database. An offline reporting and communication process is used to periodically synchronize the two databases.
Information Technologies is considering the advantages of combining the database used by the Legal department for fines with the database used by the Finance department for general payments. These databases share much of the same structure. Other Departments such as Personnel’s Risk Manager, and certain Public Works staff will need the ability to add and track data as well. Combining them would provide the benefit of payments in one department being immediately apparent in the other department, with no offline reporting necessary. Consolidating the databases into one would also ease the control and maintenance of the database from an IT perspective. Finally, this provides an opportunity to move these databases from MS Access to MS SQL Server – a move providing its own set of benefits.