Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Databases

What You Have Learned

In a real scenario, you might find that many more iterations are required to get to an initial design. The time it takes to achieve a useful design is dependent on how thorough your analysis is and the frequency with which you seek input from the users of the database. Of all the sources of information you get, report requests might be the most valuable because you can often reverse-engineer reports to the base entities that are required to produce such a report. Of course, other sources of information—interviews and existing systems—are also important. In different situations, you can rely on different sources to different extents.

The result of your analysis work culminates in the form of a database model. The most common ...