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Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

Asked 2010-03-09T10:05:23.660
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I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed database.

I want to have some decent examples of database structures for contracts / billing / orders etc to combine those in one nice relational database. Are there any resources out there that can help me with some examples regarding this?

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Barry Williams has published a library of about six hundred data models for all sorts of applications. Almost certainly it will give you a "starter for ten" for all your subsystems. Access to this library is free so check it out.

It sounds like this is a big "enterprise-y" application your organisation wants, and you seem to be a bit of a beginner with databases. If at all possible you should start with a single sub-system - say, Orders - and get that working. Not just the database tables build but some skeleton front-end for it. Once that is good enough add another, related sub-system such as Billing. You don't want to end up with a sprawling monster.

Also make sure you have a decent data modelling tool. SQL Power Architect is nice enough for a free tool.

answered 2010-03-09T10:41:47.693
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Try to keep your concerns separate here. Users being able to update the database is more of an "application design" problem. If you get your database design right then it should be a case of developing a nice front end for it.

First thing to look at is Normalization. This is the process of eliminating any redundant data from your tables. This will help keep your database neat, and only store information that is relevant to your needs.

answered 2010-03-09T10:10:34.543

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