Introduction to Logical Design › Overview of the Logical Design Process

Overview of the Logical Design Process

During the initial stage of logical design, you identify the business problem that users hope to solve by creating a database. After interviewing several employees, you perform a thorough analysis of the business system, determining the processing functions performed by the organization and the flow of data during typical executions of these functions.

An analysis of the system provides documentation of the types of data required by users to perform their day-to-day business tasks. With this documentation, you can create the entity-relationship diagram.

Procedure

Logical database design involves the following procedures:

• Analyzing the business system
• Identifying the data entities (or data tables) and their relationships
• Identifying the data attributes
• Normalizing the data attributes
• Verifying that all business functions are supported by the logical design

Note: The first three procedures listed above are often performed concurrently. For example, in many instances, you will identify data entities, relationships, and attributes as you analyze the business system. By drawing a rough entity-relationship diagram during the systems analysis phase, you can sometimes simplify the design process.

Review the process

After you have performed the procedures listed above, you need to review the process and the available documentation with users in your corporation. As these users make suggestions for improvement, make appropriate changes to the design.

Each of the five major procedures of the logical design process is explained in detail in Chapters 3 through 7.