If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

 
Go Back  dBforums > General > Database Concepts & Design > Need suggestions/comments on dB design

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 03-10-05, 05:24
d95zell d95zell is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 1
Question Need suggestions/comments on dB design

I need to come up with a design of a database handling research data from studies on emerging ventures in the Mobile Internet business, containing interviews with company representatives and financial data about companies.

Being a complete beginner on dB design and implementation, I turn to you guys here and hope that someone can give me some help or pointers to where to look for more information. I've browsed through material from university classes in dB and searched around on the internet, but I lack any "proper" skills.

I really just need the design, although I would be nice to be able to implement it (Oracle 10 and MS Access available) for testing purposes. The design will serve as information on our needs and is part of a larger system which IT-consultants eventually will design and implement, but I want give them an example on what we're aiming at (plus that it gives an opportunity to save some money on consultant fees...).

---

Our data:

A set of interviews with a number of companies is called a Survey, and a survey can contain:
* Interviews (BLOB) with [1..n] companies.
* Other material not connected with a specific company (BLOB) - for example information about the background of the survey.
* Tabular data regarding companies.
* Tabular data not related to a specific company.

Each company can have the following types of information:
* Interviews from [0..m] surveys (BLOB).
* Material not connected with any survey (BLOB) - for example a business plan.
* Tabular data relating to [0..m] surveys.
* Tabular data not related to a specific survey.

---

Based upon this I thought that I could have one table of BLOBs and a number of data tables - as there exists diverse tabular data and there is a future need of importing new tabular data from other databases.

I set out designing in DBDesigner (png, xml), using few tables where there would be entries referencing both Survey and Company - but there would also be a lot of entries only referring to only one Survey or Company. I came to wonder about the [0..*] relations. Is there any drawbacks using these?

Another possibility would be using more tables, dividing the information so that there are no [0..*] relations (png, xml).
Would this be more advisable?

Finally, I guess that there are several more ways to go about this. As stated earlier, any comments/suggestions are welcome.
Attached Images
File Type: png all_optional_relations.png (27.7 KB, 107 views)
File Type: png no_optional_relations.png (50.1 KB, 91 views)
Attached Files
File Type: txt all_optional_relations.xml.txt (32.4 KB, 124 views)
File Type: txt no_optional_relations.xml.txt (43.5 KB, 106 views)

Last edited by d95zell; 03-10-05 at 06:18. Reason: Adding links
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On