Principles of database requirements analysis
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Designated database analysis plan
Database requirements analysts must first formulate a work plan, when and where to do what work, who needs assistance from the user side, which developers need assistance, and so on. Continuously check, adjust, and summarize work results in a timely manner.
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Choose the appropriate database requirements analysis method
Choose an appropriate database requirements analysis method, such as structured analysis method, prototype analysis method, object-oriented analysis method.
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Choose the right database requirements analysis tool software
In order to improve the efficiency of database requirements analysis, database requirements analysts should use database requirements analysis tools as much as possible, such as Rational DOORS from IBM in the United States and Visio from Microsoft from the United States.
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Investigate existing systems
Database requirements analysts should carefully collect and organize various data in the existing system to avoid omissions and errors.
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Fully communicate with users
Database requirements analysts should communicate in a language that users can understand and avoid using pure computer professional language to ask and explain related questions. Fully respect the opinions of users, and meet the needs of users as much as possible. For some unfulfilled requirements, be patient and explain why they cannot or should not be fulfilled.
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Understand user data management content and goals
Database requirements analysts can only help database designers design a target system that meets user needs if they understand the user's data management content and goals.
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Analyze and confirm database requirements
The data requirement is not a copy of the actual data of the existing system, because the data in the existing system may have description errors, redundancy, inaccuracies, incompleteness, and inconsistencies. Database requirements analysts should eliminate the above unreasonable phenomena, and if necessary, by modifying data structures, merging data, and disassembling data, repeatedly weigh and obtain accurate database requirements.
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Contact for changes immediately
Although it is very difficult to completely eliminate database requirement changes, excessive demand changes will seriously affect the system development progress and quality. Therefore, reducing and even eliminating demand changes is one of the important tasks of database demand analysts. The amount of demand changes also reflects the quality and level of database demand analysis. In the system development process, the later changes in requirements occur, the greater the impact. For example, the overall structure is determined but it is found that adding new functional modules will result in costly rework. Users who need to change their requirements should contact the developer as soon as possible.
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Put forward database implementation suggestions and solutions
Generally speaking, the “demand” mentioned by users is already a practical and feasible implementation plan. Database requirements analysts should try their best to understand the real data requirements from this implementation plan. At the same time, they should also find unreasonable data management business in the storage system. In order to ensure that the target system will not be invalid or inefficient; after thoroughly clarifying the data in the business field, propose improvements to add some valuable data features that users have not discovered.
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Seriously write database requirements specifications
- The database requirements specification is part of the database system requirements analysis. It describes the various requirements of the database in a complete, clear, accurate, and easy-to-understand manner. Therefore, database requirements analysts must not only have good computer expertise, but also good professional knowledge in the field corresponding to the transactions processed by the target system, as well as good writing skills.
- It is a method to temporarily add a "pending" flag to the document. Use this mark to indicate which areas need further discussion, analysis, or additional information. Sometimes it may be marked as "to be determined" because a particular need is difficult to solve or no one wants to deal with it. If the user cannot express accurately for a while, the prototype development technology is usually used. Through prototyping technology, users can repeatedly modify with the developers to continuously improve the definition of requirements . Use software reuse technology
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Use software reuse technology
Make full use of existing database needs analysis documents to achieve document reuse (ie reuse). If the database requirements analyst finds that the database requirements of a certain software are close to the requirements described by the user, they can make full use of them to shorten the time of database requirements analysis.
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Carefully review the database requirements specifications
In order to confirm the rationality, completeness, and correctness of the database requirements described in the database requirements specifications, a database requirements review must also be conducted. The database requirements review is generally conducted together with the database system review. The main contents of the review are:
- Whether the database requirements are consistent with the user's requirements.
- Whether the database requirements meet the requirements of the database system and whether there are interface problems.
- Whether the content of the database requirements specification is complete.
- Whether the database requirements specifications are complete, clear, accurate, and easy to understand reflect the user's data requirements.
- Whether all the charts are reasonable and the explanation is sufficient.
In order to ensure the quality of the database requirements review, the reviewers should include database requirements analysts, users, database system designers and testers, and project leaders. After the review, the person in charge of the review should sign and give review comments.
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Modify and improve database requirements specifications
According to the review comments, carefully modify the database requirements specifications until the user and developer jointly approve. The jointly approved database requirements specifications are the basis for database design, database testing, and acceptance.
The ultimate goal of database requirements analysis is to obtain a jointly approved database requirements specification.
