Understanding Business Requirements

JOURNAL #SIX [DAT601]

Learning Summary

LOCKDOWN UPDATE / REMOTE CLASS

Lockdown Update

Our team took the opportunity to use the COVID-19 lockdown to complete Milestone 2 of the practice assignment. The final step of the practical assignment was ensuring the database met fifth normal form. We had progressed well during class session and after class discussion and felt that there was no reason we couldn’t be in a position to submit our report on the original submission date.

Remote Class

The class received the Milestone 1 assignment this week. After reviewing the documentation I laid out a plan as to how I was going to tackle the project which followed the class learning structure laid out in the practice assignment, but also changes, things I wish I’d had done differently particularly during these early stages and at the conceptual level. I believe these changes would have saved time and unnecessary revisions and therefore will be beneficial.

WHAT

Defining Entities and Attributes

Our class session involved carrying out a requirements analysis of the business objects. We converted the objects, along with their characteristics, into the language of the Entity Relationship Diagram. This was an a worth while exercise and I’m glad we carried out in class.

We looked specifically at defining the entities and attributes as a class which, not only affirmed my intentions of starting the assignment in this way was along the right track, but by doing it as a class I was also able to compare my analysis of the business objects with that of the rest of the class.

We identified both:

1. Tangible business objects e.g. employee, data box, and;
2. Intangible business objects e.g. transaction, stream

These entities will eventually become the tables with the database.

In addition to the above we also defined some of the attributes associated with the entities. The business objects will have characteristics that define them, these become the entities attributes and stored as fields in the entities table. These attributes either:

1. Identify the entities - known as key attributes e.g. person tax ID number
2. Describe the entities - known as non-key attributes e.g. name, address, email

WHY

We carry out a requirements analysis in order to gather all the information needed to develop a database that meets the needs of the business or organisation. The greater the understanding of the requirements the more effective the end product.

More importantly a clear understanding at this stage will help minimise errors, speed up the work that is needed to be carried out at this stage of the development life cycle and limit the amount of consultation time and input from the business organisation, meaning they can continue to focus on the day to day running of their business.

At this stage of the assignment, defining the entities is extremely important and requires time and thoughtful analysis to ensure a smoother progress through the early stages of the database life cycle. However it shouldn’t restrict the process by making the development team closed off to opportunities when they arise, or continue to look for issues that may effect the end design.

HOW

The exercise is carried out by:

1. Determining the data requirements by analysing the business requirements and objectives
2. List the information that characterises the business objects
3. Understand how these entities relate to and interact with one another
4. Use the extended entity relationship model to better define the rules that govern these interactions