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Business Benefits
Investing in complete analysis and design of data requirements at the beginning of a
project is the pre-requisite to the delivery of accurate data models and long-lived
databases. Many organizations concentrate on physical data models without putting
enough prior emphasis on how and why the data is used. Without this initial focus, databases are often designed without flexibility. Shortly after their production roll-out business users may find it impossible to retrieve data in a way that was not originally planned unless they are aware of certain prerequisite information based on existing design constraints. Proper and design initiatives would have prevented this impractical requirement.
The benefits of a good database design are directly related to business revenue. Proper
and encompassing designs do not require constant rework. Aside from the obvious cost savings,
the business is able to receive information on demand with minimal effort.
The Database Design Solutions Approach
Database Design Solutions stresses the role of information within the business by focusing
initially on the development of a logical data model. The preparation of this model is based
upon detailed data requirements analysis, focusing on not only the perspectives of the
initiating business user community, but also the perspectives of the data source software,
the recipient business users, and the overall relationships of the data to other primary data within the organization. Most of this information is eventually used as metadata to be included with all Database Design Solutions database deliverables.
Database Design Solutions prides itself on its knowledge of industry specific data. Having
worked with data from many organizations, we have established practices in most major
industries, each with an appointed practice manager well experienced in the specific
vertical industry data issues. We are already familiar with common industry data, its
representations, common values, and integration concerns.
Once a logical data model is confirmed, implementation aspects are investigated in order
to finalize the ultimate database definition. Physical models are created to define the
format and organization of the resulting data store. As such, they contain and illustrate
the details which surround the structure, access, performance, update, and security of the
resulting database (or databases in distributed environments).
Logical & Physical Database Design Deliverables - An Example
Detailed Project Plan
Interview Write-Ups
Data Source Inventory
Source Physical Data Models
Metadata Requirements Analysis
Target Logical Data Model
Database Access/Performance Requirements
Physical Data Model
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