database-development

Database Development Process

Database development process is an important aspect of database engineering. As a database system is an essential component of the larger enterprise information system. The database development is a process of designing, implementing, and maintaining a database system to meet the strategic or operational needs of an organization or enterprise such as improved customer support and customer satisfaction, better production management in an organization, better inventory management and more accurate sales forecasting. Database development process is useful develop different types of relations between data in an organization, which may be further easily accessed by the user or the administrator.

database development

Database development

Normally, information system is the larger environment surrounds a database. We can say that database is a part of an information system. Information system contains a large number of data or information which includes the all the results for which the client should ask or order to the server. We can say that information system is the largest platform in the database management system.

Components of an Information system

There are several components associated in information system.
(a)  A system is a set of related components which work together to perform a task or a specific goal. Goals or objectives are completed by interfacing with the environment and the functions.
(b) An information system manipulates the data rather than the physical objects. This system accepts the data from its environment, process it, and gives the required output for decision making.
(c)  Database is an essential component of the information system. Database provides the long term memory for information system. The long term memory are such as in terms of entity and relationship.
(d) Information system contains database as well as the information regarding people, place, input data, procedure, output data, software, hardware, etc.

Information System Development Process

Normally, development of a system mean to create, update, maintain that particular system. Likewise information system development process is a procedure through which we can update, maintain the whole information system. The development process consists of several phases through which the system is to be developed. These may include certain backtracking process which may help to correct and modify the errors during the development process.

Information System Development Life Cycle

A life cycle is the diagrammatic representation of the development process. This cycle is easy to understand to the customer as well as to the programmer. The information system development life cycle consists of the following phases:
(a)  Preliminary investigation phase
(b) System analysis phase
(c)  System design phase
(d) System implementation phase
(e)  Maintenance phase

Preliminary Investigation Phase

It is the first phase of the life cycle. It produces the problem statement and the feasibility study. The problem statements include the objectives, constraints and scope of the system. The feasibility study identifies the cost and benefit of the system. If the system is feasible, then the system analysis phase will start.

System analysis phase

System analysis phase is the second phase in the life cycle model. It comes after the completion of feasibility study. This phase produces requirements describing processes, data and environment interaction. In this phase, the diagrammatic techniques are used to document processes, data and environment interactions. To produce requirements, the current system is studied.

Role of system design phase

System design phase is the third phase in the information system development life cycle. It comes after the system analysis phase. This phase produces the plans to efficiently implement the requirements. Design specifications are created for processes , data and environment interaction. The design specification focuses on choices to optimize resources of the given constraints.

Goals of Database Development

Normally the goal of database development is to create a database which contains a high quality of data and provides the important access to the organization. Beside this there are certain other goals of database development. These are:
(a)  Develop a common vocabulary
(b) Define a meaning of data
(c)  To ensure the quality of data
(d) To find an efficient implementation of data

Phases of Database Development

To produce an operational database we  need to define external, internal and conceptual schema and supply the data to the database. To create these schema, we have to follow some processes. The first two phases are concerned with the information content of the database whereas the last two phases are concerned with the efficient implementation. The phases are listed below.
(a)  Conceptual data modelling
(b) Logical database design
(c)  Distributed database design
(d) Physical database design

Skills in Database Development

As a database designer, we have the following two types skills in database development.
(a)  Soft skill:- It is the first skill in database development. These type of skills are qualitative, subjective and people oriented. Qualitative skill emphasize the generation of feasible alternatives.
(b) Hard skill:– This is the second type of skill in database development. This type of skill is quantitative, objective and data oriented. The quantitative disciplines are statistics, operational management or any mathematical model.