Data and the Other Columns

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Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture
By David C. Hay
Table of Contents
Chapter 3.  Column One: Data


Data and Activities

In conjunction with the Column Two part of the project, the Requirements Analysis project should deliver an activity/entity cross reference ("CRUD Matrix"). This allows for finding activities without entity types and entity types without activities. Activities without entities may be spurious , or they may be a sign that something was overlooked in the data model. Entity types without activities may simply mean that maintenance activities were overlooked. (See more on the activity/entity type matrix on page 195.)

Data and Locations

There have always been two issues when one sets out to build a distributed database: Where should the data reside? Where are they to be used? This is one case, however, where technology is rapidly rendering these questions less important. It is now possible to make the data in all entities available everywhere. Still, when the physical database configuration is being laid out, it will be useful to know the locations from which data for each entity type will come, and the locations where they will be used.

Data, People, and Organizations

A very important part of the documentation for a data model is identification of the roles (if not the individual people) who will be responsible for each entity type and attribute. Certain people will "own" an entity type, meaning that those people are ultimately responsible for its data quality. The same or other people are responsible for updating it. Yet others have permission to see it. This matrix is required if data quality is to be established.

Documentation of each entity type should include identification of at least the role responsible for the quality of its information, if not the individual person so responsible.

Data and Timing

In Chapter 7 is defined the "entity life history" technique for describing the states an occurrence of an entity type can go through in the course of its life. Understanding the structure of data, as revealed in an entity/relationship diagram, does not completely reveal the nature of the entities involved. It is in the life historythe succession of statesthat this is revealed. State/transition diagrams show that sequence of states. Entity life histories show how timing (events) determines the passage of entities from one state to another.

Data and Business Rules

Fundamentally, business rules are about data. In Row Three, especially , a business rule constrains what data may be or must be created in the course of business operations. The discovery and definition of business rules must be carried out in conjunction with the development of the data model.


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Requirements Analysis. From Business Views to Architecture
Requirements Analysis: From Business Views to Architecture
ISBN: 0132762005
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2001
Pages: 129
Authors: David C. Hay

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