University of Arkansas

Walton College

The Sam M. Walton College of Business

Dillard's Department Stores

Dillard's Inc., founded in 1938, is a publicly traded U.s.-based retailer. Dillard's ranks among the largest U.S. fashion apparel and home furnishings retailers. Dillard's has grown through expansion into mall properties as well as through acquisition of smaller department stores. Headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, Dillard's has been using centralized computer systems since the 1960's.

dilards logo

Accessing the Dillard's Dataset

The Dillard's dataset is contained within the Walton College of Business's Enterprise Systems.

The dataset can be accessed with SQL queries within the University of Arkansas's Remote Desktop environment. The best way to access the dataset would be within the University's Teradata SQL Assistant software or Microsoft SQL Management Studio (Systems).

Once an account is obtained, the Dillard's database can be queried as fit by the user.



Access To This Dataset

Access to this dataset is for educational use and Systems Access must be requested and approved prior to use. Once access has been approved, the Data Dictionary and Entity Relationship Diagram is available by logging into the requested system and selecting the Instructions tab.

Note: By legal agreement, It is forbidden to download the data from the University of Arkansas systems. This will be strictly enforced.

Request Systems Access

Resources

Behind the Data

The Dillard's Department Store Database contains retail sales information gathered from store sales transactions. The sale process begins when a customer brings items intended for purchase (clothing, jewelry, home décor, etc) to any store register. A Dillard's sales associate scans the individual items to be purchased with a barcode reader. This populates the transaction table (TRNSACT), which will later be used to generate a sales receipt listing the item, department, and cost information (related price, sale price, etc.) for the customer. When the customer provides payment for the items, payment details are recorded in the transaction table, the receipt is printed, and the transaction is complete. Other tables are used to store information about stores, products, and departments.

The Dataset

Dillard's has had an ongoing collaboration with Walton College Enterprise Systems. This collaboration has resulted in several gifted datasets, updates and finally a weekly updated gift for advancing the skillsets of both our students and faculty. The initial retail sales information, UA_DILLARDS_2016, was provided to the Walton College of Business by Dillard's stores, Inc. Consisting of five tables with more than 128 million rows already populated and ready for use. Dillard's updated this dataset in 2018 (WCOB_DILLARDS). This dataset included the same five tables and consisted of 75 million customers, 107 weekly updates to WCOB_DILLARDS in a new dataset WCOB_DILLARDS_LIVE. This latest collaboration allows faculty and students to create inferences on prior data in order to test model efficacy with the next week's update.

Contents

This is a gifted dataset that is based on real operational data. Like any real database, integrity problems may be noted. This can provide a unique opportunity not only to expose students to real data but also to illustrate the effects of data integrity problems.

Dillard’s Live (WCOB_DILLARDS_LIVE)

Table Name Time Frame Rows Attributes Size (GB)
CUSTOMER n/a 83,513,612 7 8.037
DEPARTMENT n/a 938 6 0.001
SKU_STORE n/a 520,148,909 4 19.969
SKU n/a 29,594,797 10 3.239
STORE n/a 411 6 0.001
TRANSACT 10/17/2016 to 7/20/2019 425,589,589 15 42.340
6 TABLES     48 137.593
Platform data is currently available: Yes

Dillard’s 2016 (WCOB_DILLARDS)

Table Name Time Frame Rows Attributes Size (GB)
CUSTOMER n/a 75,544,740 7 7.250
DEPARTMENT n/a 580 6 0.001
SKU n/a 6,784,378 10 1.400
SKU_STORE n/a 164,178,473 4 11.343
STORE n/a 313 6 0.001
TRANSACT 1/1/2014 to 10/17/2016 107,572,906 15 22.395
6 TABLES     48 42.391
Platform data is currently available: Yes