Year: 1979
Type: article
Abstract: Data base design is considered one of the most difficult areas o f data base technology [TA76, pp .68, 70 ] .Why is this so?For th e computer professional facing the design of a user-oriented information system, the answer is immediate : There is no straightforward method for designing a practical data base .To a great extent, the academic and research communities consider data design as a process for picturing the real world b y means of logical data structures [CH76 ; C071 ; L079 ; M078] .Computer vendors and software suppliers, on the other hand , view data base design as a discipline aimed at accommodatin g data elements into more or less physically oriented structures [BU74, p .135] .Although there have been design approaches suggesting a functional structuring of data (see [GE75] for instance), th e computer professional appears to have had so far the options o f surrendering to one of the above mentioned extremes, trying t o reconcile them, giving up the idea of going into data base or usin g the data base management system to support files organized according to traditional rules .'The latter situation, quite common in installations that "are going data base " for the first time, deserves a special paragraph .The initial applications usually run smoothly, but when severa l applications are piled up, the tip of the iceberg starts to emerge i n the form of excessive response time or alarming operational cost .By the time the problem attracts management attention, it is usually too late to correct the defects, and the situation eventually assumes catastrophic dimensions .The blame is commonly unloaded upon the software adopted , and what is basically a technical problem is often solved wit h administrative expediency by switching to another DBMS .A new iteration begins, and, if the same mistake is repeated, the whol e data base concept is questioned .The method suggested in this paper is based on a particula r VALIDAT E D .B .
Author: Francisco Walter Molina
Institution: World Health Organization
Language: English
Subfield: Information Systems
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2076702592