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Database Development Plan

 

1.       Database Planning – Perform a needs assessment to acquire a detailed understanding of the business needs, data requirements and long-range plans for the new database. 

A.      Requirements

·   Identify key personal to be interviewed.  Key personal include those who are most familiar with the subject matter.  Interviewees should consist of both subject matter experts and technical staff and should represent all aspects of the database being designed. 

·   Identify the current workflow and business process

·   Identify any desired changes to the current workflow or business process

·   Identify the goals of the new database

·   Identify existing data that will be put into the database as well as new data

B.      Hardware/Software Analysis

·   Identify operating system database will reside on

·   Identify database software to be used

·   Determine if a database or set of standards for database development already exist that meet customer expectations.  If not, database must be constructed from scratch.

2.       Logical Database Modeling – define conceptual and physical database design to accommodate the information needs of the users for a defined set of applications|

A.      Entity-Relation Model 

·   Define Entities – entities are the principal data object about which information is to be collected.  Entities are analogous to tables in the physical design    

·   Define Relationships – a relationship represents an association between two or more entities. 

·    Define Attributes – attributes describe the entity of which they are associated.  Attributes are analogous to field or column names in the physical design

·   Define Connectivity and Cardinality of each relationship.  Connectivity describes the mapping of associated entity instances.  Cardinality is the actual number of related occurrences for each of the two entities.    
 

B.      Customer Review of initial logical model

C.      Revision of logical model

3.       Physical Database Model Implementation - Physical database design consists of building a database schema from the logical process and data models for a specific systems environment.

A.      Database Schema

·   Identify a primary key for each entity

·   Identify Foreign keys for each entity

·   Establish Primary Key-Foreign Key relationships

·   Assign attribute Names

·   Assign attribute data types

 

 

B.      Database Integrity/Constraints

·   Entity Integrity – For every instance of an entity, the value of the primary key must exist, be unique, and cannot be null. 

·   Referential Integrity – Every foreign key value must match a primary key value in an associated table. 

·   Insert and Delete – Integrity rules will be established to control the parent/child relationship of each entity when adding or deleting records. 

·   Domains – For each attribute, a domain, or valid set of values, will be established to assure the values entered when making an insert or update make sense.  Domain types include data type, length, date format, range, null support or default value.

·   Foreign Key Domain – The data type, length and format of the foreign keys must be the same as the corresponding primary key

C.      Database Security

·   Create Users

·   Create Roles

·   Assign Privileges

4.       Post Database Development 

A.      Implementation

·   Install and configure and necessary any software

·   Install database

·   Test database with an initial dataset to make sure all functions are working

·   Apply performance tuning for database speed and efficiency

B.      Database Documentation

·   Define all objects within the database

·   Document all entity relationships

·   Document all queries, forms and reports

·   Deliver final Entity-Relation diagram

C.      Database Training

·   How to properly use the database

·   How to modify the database