COURSE CODE: Course Title

Resource Title
Topic 2.: DATABASE SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT
PROCESS

Course Lecturer: Kwama Leonard

September 12, 2014

MASENO UNIVERSITY

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Heading 1

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.

Functional decomposition of business functions see below.

Order Processing

Fill Customer Order Ship Customer Order

Receive Check Cust. Create Check Product Create Create Back

ORDER Credit New Cust. Stock Invoice Order

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.

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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 project initiation and planning,
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.

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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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