Re: Data Model

Thanks for the great responses.

_at_Frank

You are definately right about things not being bullet proof...but I'm not going to walk into a fight with Mr. T with one hand tied behind my back :-)

>Its never that foolproof, and whilst I am an adherent, I also try to
>avoid building any edifice to future requirements if they haven't been
>expressed by the business yet. Sure, if they say "when that is done we
>want to move on to ...." that is different - then you should do some
>analysis to ensure you will be prepared.

With this job, I'm about 50% developer and 50% solution provider. Part of my job is to be the one that 'offers' solutions and upgrades to existing processes, as opposed to just getting a project and doing it to a certain specification. With that said, I have to try my best to set my self up for success in the future, and still achieve a rapid level of deliverables. By no means am I going to go off on a tangent trying to prepare for every possible scenario, but if I set things up as entities and relationships that closely match the business model I'm a little more flexible in my options to not have to code a hack. Thats where common sense steps in.

>I haven't investigated first hand but there some open source ones -
>Mambo I think is rated, although its pedigree is subject to some
>corporate machinations FWIR.

And just for giggles, Harris County has an enterprise wide agreement with Microsoft, the open source killer. I was at the Information Technology center and built a cms from the ground up. It's really nice and has been accepted by users...but top management wants a package for everything, so I was tasked to build something until the next budget cycle came through incase they didn't get approval. They( we up until this week ) have narrowed it down to 2 vendors and my cmp. Many think the cmp is enough and purchasing a package is a waste of money, considering the cmp as it is now covers 95% of users needs, is stable, and performs extremely well. What I've learned about these package systems is that they are great, but cost mucho dinero.

So I've transferred over and these guys I'm with now ( All of this as it has been told to me ) have been burned badly by site server. To elaborate, what they've tasked my with is getting everything "mainstream". If I were to suggest open source they would throw me out the window :-)

Thanks for your data model, this is what I came up with. Feel free to shoot it down if you disagree.

PK's are defined by *
FK's are defined by #
CK's are defined by &

The relationships are implied. I may have forgot a few fields but the main structure is there.

tblJudge[ *JudgeID, JudgeName, PhoneNum, #CourtClassID, #LocationID ] tblCourtClass[ *CourtClassID, CourtClass ] --Civil, Criminal, etc... tblBuilding[ *BuildingID, BuildingName, Address, City, State, Zipcode ]  --Harris County Civil Courthouse
tblLocation[ *LocationID, #BuildingID, Location ] --9th floor tblStaffType[ *StaffTypeID, StaffType ] --Secretary, Clerk, Bailiff, etc...
tblJudgeStaff[ &JudgeID, &StaffTypeID, StaffName, PhoneNum, Email ]

This was finalized before Carl asked his questions, so to address Carl:

I merged the Court and Judge entities as one entity. Great questions. I could have easily replaced the word Staff with Position or something similiar. Once again, excellent questions. Thanks for asking questions and getting down to the bottom of things. I'm very curious as to how you would model this, knowing its for a web environment.

I know that technically, this could have been normalized more, but I think it matches the business model and isn't overkill. Some people would probably go less, others would probably go more. THAT is EXACTLY what I came here to find out.

_at_David

Interesting information. I agree your with views. If this website was getting a lot of hits I probably would have preferred a OLAP style of design for the data store. Functionally, OLAP and OLTP data stores implementation should be transparent to my consuming app, and I've designed it that way.

_at_ALL

BTW...where is my good buddy Gene???? What does he have to say? I'm interested in all points of view, and as many as possible. Received on Sat Mar 04 2006 - 17:01:25 CET