a. The Happy Nights motel chain system would be a two-tiered system. The local motel franchise reservation systems would act as clients that connect to a centralized DBMS server located at the central office.
b. The Sticky Wicket Company system would be a three-tiered system. Each branch office acts as a client with its own local DBMS (tier 1). The central Detroit office acts as the middleware tier to connect the branch office DBMS systems. And the centralized inventory database in Detroit acts as the shared database resource (tier 3).