Question

Think about the data collected and used by Netflix.

A) Identify three tables that would contain customer or subscription data.

B) For each table identified in a list five attributes (you may include primary and foreign keys as well as non-key attributes)

C) Describe each attribute using elements from data dictionary (e.g. descriptions, field length, field type, etc.)

D) Why would Netflix be interested in storing and tracking these attributes (e.g. to enhance customer service or future customer sales, to sell more affiliated products to customers, etc.(

Answer 1

Okay so as everyone knows that Netflix is quite a popular these days. And most of the people are basically using Netflix and chilling these days. But it's not easy to maintain such a large scale company and basically a lot of data is required. Now that data can be of various type i.e, Data provided by the user or data deduced by the software system itself on the basis of the activities. So some of the common tables that can be used to data can probably be:

A) Three tables that can contain customer data should be:

        (a) User Details - all the info required to make profile like name, contact info, etc.

        (b) Billing Details- Details related to monthly billing and subscription

        (c) User Activity- Rating and watch history based on which recommendations can be given.

B)

i) User Details: Name, Phone Number, Email Address, Username(profile name), Country, Gender, Date of Birth etc.

ii) Billing Details: Monthly/Yearly due, Day of subscription, the Expiry date of Subscription, Saved credit card details(for a fast forward mode of payment), Information of selected Subscription plan(premium, VIP sort of thing), phone number(for OTP), charges, payment mode etc.

iii) User Activity: watch history, IP of devices used for accessing Netflix, cookies, Searches, Ratings, Rewatch details, Nature of show etc

C) As I have given more than 5 attributes for each table I will use the top 5 attributes for description.

       a) i) Name( name of the user, varchar, length (50)(can be more as well people generally don't have that long names)).

        ii) Phone Number( users phone number, INT, length(15)).

             iii) Email Address( user's email id, VARCHAR, length(30)).

           iv) Profile name( name used on profile, VARCHAR, length(10)).

           v) Country ( country user living in, VARCHAR, length(20)).

      b) i) Due( monthly/yearly amount that is due, FLOAT, length(20)).

          ii) Day of subscription(the day on which user subscribed, DATE, length(8)).

          iii) Expiry of subscription( The day on which subscription ends, DATE, length(8)).

          iv) Saved credit card details( Credit card number, LONG INT, length(20)).

          v) Phone number( for OTP purpose, INT, Length(10)).

        c) i) watch history( VARCHAR, LENGTH(100)).

            ii) IP Addresses( IP of devices used for accessing Netflix, VARBINARY, length(16)).

            iii) Searches( Varchar, length(100)).

            iv) Ratings(rating out of 10, FLOAT, length(5)).

                v) Nature of show(genre, VARCHAR, length(20)).

D) Well, there are various reasons to do so, these big companies need and collect more and more data in order to improve their services, for example, IP address helps in keeping the track of devices you are using for accessing software so that if some other device is used you can be notified in advance for security reasons. Other than that credit card details are stored for making the payment process simple so that instead of typing for card number again you can just type few credentials and can make safe payment. All the cookies and histories are used to improve user interaction with the software, a lot of big analytics and machine learning is applied to that data in order to improve the recommendation system so that you can watch shows of a particular genre that you like. Phone numbers and email ids are used for account recovery in case the person forgets his login credentials. Hence these are several ways in which the data is used by Softwares like Netflix. And as we belong to a computer science background we know that data is key.