Beginning Database Design Solutions

Chapter 4. Understanding User Needs

The previous chapters discussed databases in general terms. Chapters 1 and 2 explained the goals of database design and described some of the types of databases that are available. Chapter 3 described the most common type of database, relational databases, in slightly greater detail. With this basic understanding of databases, you're ready to take the first step in designing an actual database to solve a particular problem: understanding the user's needs.

Designing any custom product, whether it's a database, beach house, or case mod (see www.neatorama.com/case-mod/index.php for some amazing examples), is largely a translation process. You need to translate the customers' needs, wants, and desires from the sometimes fuzzy ideas floating around in their heads into a product that meets the customers' needs.

The first step in the translation process is understanding the user's requirements. Unless you know what the user needs, you cannot build it. Designing the best order processing database imaginable won't do you a bit of good if the customer really wants a circuit design database or an ostrich race handicapping system.

Just as the database design forms the foundation upon which the rest of the application's development stands, your understanding of the user's needs form the foundation of the database design. If you don't know what the user needs, how can you possibly design it?

If you don't understand the customer's needs thoroughly and completely, ...