7.4 Database Systems Development Life Cycle
The database life cycle (DBLC) consists of six phases. These phases include database primary study planning, analysis, detailed System design, (prototyping), implementation and loading, testing and evaluation, operation, maintenance and evolution.
In the database primary study, the researcher examines the current systems operations in the company to determine how and why the current system isn’t sustainable. The objective of this study is to analyze the company status, define problems and constraints, define purpose, and define the scope and boundaries. Each section can be broken down in order to further understand the usefulness behind creating this study.
| Analyzing the company situation | Pertains to defining the general conditions within a company, including its organization structure and its mission. In order to correctly do this, the designer must discover what the company’s operation components are, the way they function, and how they interact. |
| Defining Problems and Constraints | Pertains to the discovery of issues within the company, formally and informally. These problems may appear unstructured; however, problems are usually connected, allowing the designer to overcome them by the end of the process. |
| Defining Objectives | Is a part of the new proposed database system showing that it is designed to solve the major problems identified previously? |
| Defining the Scope and Boundaries | Pertains to the engineer recognizing the existence of their limits: scope and boundaries. The system’s scope shows the extent of the design according to the requirements. The system also is connected to limits known as boundaries which are external. These boundaries are set by the accompanying hardware and software.
Database design is the second phase focusing on the design of the database that supports company operations and objectives in the future. This can be viewed as the most critical DBLC phase. |
| Implementation and Loading | Pertain to a series of instructions when dealing with the creation of tables, attributes, etc. in the domain. In this phase, the design specifications are installed, creating the exact database required by the parent company. This can be done in 3 phases. |
| Install the DBMS | Installing a new instance of a DBMS in the system on a server. |
| Creating the DBMS | Creates the table spaces and file groups accompanied by the database. |
| Loading and Converting Data | After the database is created, the data must enter the new tables. This requires them to be merged and imported from other databases or the ones previously used in order to ensure the same data is relayed into the newer, better system.
Testing and evaluation pertain to the decision made to ensure integrity, security, performance, and recoverability of the database. Following the plans laid out previously, this fine-tunes the database to ensure that it performs as expected. This phase is also divided into three phases, making it easy to follow and accurately test the functionality of the database. |
| Test the Database | During this step, the database is tested to ensure it has the integrity and security required by the company. This is enforced through the proper use of primary and foreign key rules. |
| Fine-Tune the Database | This is the editing of the database with the results of the previous step in mind. If no fine-tuning is required, this step can be skipped. |
| Evaluating the Database | The database must be reviewed thoroughly to ensure that the data contained is protected against loss, promoting the use of a backup.
|
| Operation | The second to last step identifying that the database is fully functional. At this point, the database is complete, and the new system has space to evolve as needed by the developers. |
| Maintenance and Evolution | The final step. This step is directed by the database administrator allowing them to perform routine maintenance activities regarding the database. Some of these activities include Backup, Corrected Maintenance, Adaptive Maintenance and the Assignment of access permissions to welcome new users and edit old users. |
All together these steps make up the Database Life cycle and ensure that a fully functional database is created, allowing for around the clock maintenance within the company and promoting a highly efficient system the meets the guidelines presented at the beginning of the process.
Attribution
By Sarah North and Xiaohua Xu, Introduction to Database Systems, textbook was developed as part of a Round 16 Textbook Transformation Grant, and licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
