Projecting Growth Patterns

Identifying Application Performance Requirements › Projecting Growth Patterns

Projecting Growth Patterns

Projecting the minimum, most frequent, and maximum number of entity occurrences helps you to determine how much space is required to support a database. These projections should be for a specified period of time.

To structure the database correctly, you need to make the following projections for each entity:

Minimum number of occurrences—Identifies the starting point for the database and, when compared to the maximum, gives you an idea of the projected growth.
Most typical number of occurrences—Identifies the number of occurrences seen most frequently in the database (the mode). This number is used in determining the number of entity occurrences in a relationship and during performance analysis.
Maximum number of occurrences—Identifies the largest expected number of occurrences of this entity. This figure is used for sizing the database.

Sample number of entity occurrences

The following table shows the projected number of occurrences for each entity in the Commonweather Corporation database.

Entity Name	Minimum	Most Frequent	Maximum
DEPARTMENT	9	15	20
EMPLOYEE	560	1000	1500
OFFICE	36	90	150
JOB	41	80	120
SKILL	68	80	120
STRUCTURE	1000	1500	2000
EMPOSITION	2000	2500	3000
EXPERTISE	3000	3500	4000
COVERAGE	1000	4000	6000
LIFE INS PLAN	3	4	5
HEALTH INS PLAN	5	10	10
INS CO	5	10	15
HOSPITAL CLAIM	800	3000	5000
NON-HOSPITAL CLAIM	1000	4000	6000
DENTAL CLAIM	2500	5000	7000
PATIENT	2000	5000	7000
DENTIST	100	300	1000
PROJECT	350	500	1000
NON-HOSPITAL PROCEDURE	2000	5000	8000
DENTAL PROCEDURE	4500	7000	9000
PHYSICIAN	100	300	1000
HOSPITAL	50	100	300
WORKER	560	3000	5600