Modeling and Designing Databases - The Database Design Process

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There are three major stages in database design, each producing a progressively lower-level description:

Requirements analysis

First, we determine and write down what exactly the database is needed for, what data will be stored, and how the data items relate to each other. In practice, this might involve detailed study of the application requirements and talking to people in various roles that will interact with the database and application.

Conceptual design

Once we know what the database requirements are, we distill them into a formal description of the database design. In this chapter, we’ll see how to use modeling to produce the conceptual design.

Logical design

Finally, we map the database design onto an actual database management system and database tables.

 

Figure 4-1.  An entity set is represented by a named rectangle

At the end of the chapter, we’ll look at how we can use the open source MySQL Work bench tool to automatically convert the conceptual design to a MySQL database schema.

Next: The Entity Relationship Model >>
 

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