COURSE CODE: UCI 204

COURSE TITLE : PRINCIPLES OF RELATIONAL DATABASE SYSTEMS

TOPIC 2: DATABASE SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

MASENO UNIVERSITY
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Introduction:

Topic Objectives
At the end of this topic the learner should be able to understand the Database Systems Development
Lifecycle:
 Initial study: determine user requirements
 Implementation and loading
 DBMS installation
 data loading

Data/Information/Software Engineering
Software/Information engineering is “A data-oriented methodology to create and maintain information
systems.” It uses a top down strategy consisting of:
 planning (results in an information systems architecture)
 analysis
 design, and
 implementation.

Planning can be broken down into three steps which are designed to align information technology with
business strategies or in other words the strategic goals and objectives of the organization.

First we must identify strategic planning factors such as organizational goals, critical success factors and
problem areas.

Consequently we need to identify the corporate planning objects such as the organizational units, locations,
business functions, entity types and information systems. The information systems are said to be the
organization’s information system portfolio.

The first step in the information systems planning process of aligning information technology with business
strategies is to develop an enterprise model by decomposition of a system into its functional components.

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Functional decomposition of business functions see below.

Order Processing

Fill Customer Order Ship Customer Order

Receive Check Cust. Create Check Product Create Create Back

The order processing can be broken down into sub processes such as the filling customer orders and ship
customers orders. In a systems analysis and design project we decompose a system down to its functional
primitives which are one operation only based on the business process functional decomposition. Notice that
a system designed to support the Order Fulfillment process could be decomposed into subsystems designed
to support the business processes at each level.

Functional decomposition is a structured process or method used during the analysis of systems to organize
and identify system components. Individual system components are identified as we move from the top
(general) to the specific (bottom).

In practical application many databases are often necessary to handle the full set of business and supporting
functions, whereas a particular database may support only a subset of the supporting functions. It is, however,
helpful to have a total, high-level enterprise view so that redundancy of data can be minimized and occurs
when absolutely necessary.

“Top-down planning approaches have the advantages of a broad perspective, an ability to look at integration
of individual system components, an understanding of the relationship of information systems to business
objectives, and an understanding of the impact of information systems across the whole organization.”

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Database Development and the Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Now let’s discuss the relation of the systems development life cycle to database design and development.
The Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) consists of the following stages:

o project identification and selection,

o analysis,
o logical design, Design
o physical design,
o Coding
o Testing
o Acceptance.

The SDLC is a structured method that is called a waterfall method where the output from the previous
stage is used as input for the next stage.

The steps in the database development process are as follows:

o enterprise modeling,
o conceptual data modeling,
o project initiation and planning & analysis phases of SDLC,
o logical database design,
o physical database design and creation,
o database implementation, and
o database Maintenance.

Notice that the stages are similar. Now let’s relate the SDLC stages to the database development process.

Using the SDLC model stage 1 project identification and selection encompasses the enterprise modeling
function.

Stage two, project initiation and planning, and stage three, analysis, encompasses the conceptual data
modeling activities.

The final four stages, logical and physical design, implementation and maintenance are the same stages
for software and for database design and development although the activities conducted within each stage
are different.

Database maintenance activities for example consist of fine-tuning the database to optimize performance,
adding new data structures and so on.

The maintenance of software consists of fixing minor bugs and making minor modifications to software
such as changing the title of a report.

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