First Steps
A database schema revolves around tables, so the first step in creating a schema is to determine the tables that are needed and then determine how they relate to each other. To do this, you work forward from the requirements, data modeling, and DTD design work you've already completed. Let's return to our simple e-mail application. As in all stages of application development, we must review the requirements (we wrote these in Chapter 3; refer to that chapter if you need to review the process of gathering requirements):
A user must be able to write an e-mail message.
A user must be able to send e-mail to another user.
A user must be able to read e-mail sent to him from another user.
An e-mail will consist of a subject line and a message ...
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