To CASE or not to CASE

I am seeking advice on whether to pursue a CASE or non-CASE solution for a proposed database design project soon to be undertaken at my place of employment.

ORACLE (V7) has been purchased and relevant training is being organised for the proposed development team of four staff. These staff will be each working on the project part time (10%-40% of work time each until completion). All staff in the team have knowledge of basic db design issues from University courses etc, but none have taken part in such a project before.

The database will be used to test algorithms/software being developed to process the information stored in it. In the future it may be developed into an externally available package. ORACLE has been purchased for the sole purpose of this single application and while extensions may be made to it in the future, it is not expected to be a highly dynamic system. There is not a fixed deadline for completion of the project but prospective users and management would obviously like to see results sooner rather than later.

The two schools of thought here regarding CASE (excluding financial issues) are:

1. Use CASE as it will help the inexperienced team produce a usable DB in a shorter amount of time.
2. Don't use CASE as the manual work will give the team a better understanding of underlying design/development skills.

Has anyone out there had experiences that could help us make the correct choice. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Nick Taransky
Information and Signal Processing Group
Electronic Warfare Division
Defence Science and Technology Organisation PO Box 1500 Salisbury SA 5025 Australia

Ph:	8 61 259 5482
Fax:	8 61 259 5254
email:	nickt_at_ewd.dsto.gov.au