Database Design

By: Yasmeen Shabana

BSc of Electrical Engineering and Power Machines.

MSc of Software Engineering.

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Designing a real-world database system is a complex procedure, not only involves extensive
research but also necessitates understanding the requirements of the business needs and reconciliation
of conflicting goals. While designing the database systems, several requirements are identified, analysed
and prioritised. Different database design models adhere to a different business or user requirements.
However, design standards, processing speed, and information requirements are the three major
database requirements that might conflict together. The designer should understand these
requirements to make informative decisions towards solving the conflict (Coronel and Morris, 2015).

Design standards are essential for developing a logical structure as a backbone for the database
that formulates the design process and minimises the occurrence of data anomalies. Following the
international standards (ISO Standards, no date) for SQL will guide the designer into efficient and
effective rules. SQL framework standards (i.e. concept, constraints, structure, data integrity, etc.), rules
for supporting JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), guidelines for time-related information, or XML
related specifications are all essential for design, evaluate and improve any database system. The
designer should pick which of these specifications are relevant for governing the presentation of all the
database components and their interactions (Coronel and Morris, 2015).

Processing speed is a top priority of database performance for organisations working with a
large number of transactions on a regular basis. The processing speed requirement might be conflicting
with other design requirements such as database standardisations. If the standards dictate creating 1:1
relationship to avoid nulls, while the designer is forced to combine tables or use derived attributes to
meet the processing speed requirements (Coronel and Morris, 2015). To accommodate the high
processing requirement, the designer might be forced to change the access strategy of the database to
reduce access time (Stanczyk, Champion and Leyton, 2001). (Schulz et al., 2016) highlighted that query
performance is more efficient using NoSQL architecture, which could be a point of conflict if the
organisation business model built on SQL standardisations.

Since the database systems are primarily built to meet the practical information requirements of
the organisation and its users (Simion and Vasile, 2017), then information requirements might be the
focus of the database designer in cases where accessing timely information is necessary. To adhere to
the maximum information generation, the designer might compromise other requirements that could
be perceived as less priority such as design structure or processing speed (Coronel and Morris, 2015). A
user query involving multiple join operations, for reading large amounts of data will result in slow
response time especially if the database system is not well designed to handle such queries (L.
Harrington, 2016).

In conclusion, it is logical that the designer has to make the proper yet difficult decision of
balancing between all the competing requirements. A database system that is secured, fault tolerant,
meets timing deadlines, manages high-quality data and meets logical requirements and design
conventions by balancing between conflicting requirements is a dependable and trustworthy system.

REFERENCES

Coronel, C. and Morris, S. (2015) Database Systems Design, Implementation, and Management. 11th
edn. Cengage Learning.

ISO Standards (no date) Publicly Available Standards. Available at:

http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html (Accessed: 17 June 2018).

L. Harrington, J. (2016) Relational Database Design and Implementation. 4th edn. Elsevier ; Morgan
Kaufmann. Available at: https://www-sciencedirect-
com.liverpool.idm.oclc.org/science/book/9780128043998#? (Accessed: 24 June 2018).

Schulz, W. L. et al. (2016) ‘Evaluation of Relational and NoSQL Database Architectures to Manage
Genomic Annotations’, Journal of Biomedical Informatics, 64, pp. 288–295.

Simion, D.-O. and Vasile, E. (2017) ‘Applications for Businesses That Uses Relational Databases’, Internal
Auditing & Risk Management, 12(1), pp. 61–72. Available at:
https://liverpool.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&
AN=123009067&site=eds-live&scope=site (Accessed: 2 June 2018).

Stanczyk, S., Champion, B. and Leyton, R. (2001) Theory and Practice of Relational Databases. 2nd edn.
London; New York: Taylor & Francis.