Hi guys, I have a very clear business/functional requirements laid out including screenshots of important web pages where almost all of the data is fed into the system and is also extracted from database and shown. Once you have laid out almost all the details of data that is expected off, is it possible to quickly design a database architecture and also optimize it for performance? If not, In what form should i present my data elements to the database design team in order to cut down the devlopment time? I have to choose between 3 months contract or 6 month contract to finish the website devlopment. Iam basically collecting every piece of information to minute detail and target 3 month contract time. Thanks for your help.
If you have a decent functional requirements document prepared then that should be plenty for a designer to analyse and prepare a design. Of course they would need to have contact with you for any questions etc...
3rd normal form. Seriously, to save time, you're going to want to normalize the data down as far as you can, before giving it to them. You'll also want to determine what granularity to store all of your data. For example, do you want the purchases data stored at an order level, or at a line item level? One more thing you should do, is to make sure you know what constraints you want the database to enforce. don't worry about foreign keys, etc, as much as what values each columns will accept. Then go back and make sure your application is coded to gracefully handle constraint violations. also make sure your application handles all possible datatype violations and overflows. Hope this helps.
Also, you will want to put some temporary data into your fields and do some trial queries with them, and make sure that you are effectively using indexes/keys.
Guys, I really appreciate your valuable input. I agree that i should give the requirements along with rudimentary database design upto 3rd normal form. I really like the advise of giving constraints and alos valid data values for important columns. This way we can make sure that the application won't break. Also, there is one requirement to generate random numbers. These numbers can go upto 10 digits in length. What precautions do you guys suggest here?
actually my wife is good at it. SHe said she will spend some time reviewing my functional requirements and give a basic database design. Adding to that, i already have an existing database design which is not good and optimized. So, it should not be too tough to get a sketchy database design with new requirements. Also, one more question. Iam planning to take help from a company who will provide me a developer, tester and a team lead and charge $800 per week with minimum contract time of 3 months. They will analyse my requirements and tell me how much does the project implementation costs. Did anybody take such a service? They are also at CMMI level 3 and are going to 5 (don't know, if iam right on the name). --link dev
Is this all in mysql/php? Are they building the application as well as thw database, or just the database. I can give you a pretty good idea of backend costs. I'm a Database programmer, currently the Senior Data Warehouse Architect for a fortune 100 company, so I mainly deal in business intelligence and reporting, but I deal enough with the application developers that I have a good idea of the amount of time required.