appendix #1:

this is a "base" er (entity relationship) diagram that was made from the original pick system. details such as actual fields etc where not important. what was important here was the general table layout. the table design was "exploded" to a relation model. hence, if the table was a invoice, then the "detail" was displayed as a separate table (where in fact it was only one table). this process was re-fined until no multi-value tables exised. in many cases a single pick record became 3 or 4 sql tables.