The design of a database of resources for rational therapy

The purpose of this study is to design a database of resources for rational therapy. An investigation of the current health situation and reorientation towards primary health care (PHC) in South Africa evidenced the need for a database of resources which would meet the demand for rational therapy information made on the Helderberg College Library by various user groups as well as make a contribution to the national health information infrastructure. Rational therapy is viewed as an approach within PHC that is rational, common-sense, wholistic and credible, focusing on the prevention and maintenance of health. A model of the steps in database design was developed. A user study identified users' requirements for design and the conceptual schema was developed. The entities, attributes, relationships and policies were presented and graphically summarised in an Entity-Relationship (E-R) diagram. The conceptual schema is the blueprint for further design and implementation of the database.Information ScienceM.Inf

Schema architecture and their relationships to transaction processing in distributed database systems

We discuss the different types of schema architectures which could be supported by distributed database systems, making a clear distinction between logical, physical, and federated distribution. We elaborate on the additional mapping information required in architecture based on logical distribution in order to support retrieval as well as update operations. We illustrate the problems in schema integration and data integration in multidatabase systems and discuss their impact on query processing. Finally, we discuss different issues relevant to the cooperation (or noncooperation) of local database systems in a heterogeneous multidatabase system and their relationship to the schema architecture and transaction processing

NOSQL design for analytical workloads: Variability matters

Big Data has recently gained popularity and has strongly questioned relational databases as universal storage systems, especially in the presence of analytical workloads. As result, co-relational alternatives, commonly known as NOSQL (Not Only SQL) databases, are extensively used for Big Data. As the primary focus of NOSQL is on performance, NOSQL databases are directly designed at the physical level, and consequently the resulting schema is tailored to the dataset and access patterns of the problem in hand. However, we believe that NOSQL design can also benefit from traditional design approaches. In this paper we present a method to design databases for analytical workloads. Starting from the conceptual model and adopting the classical 3-phase design used for relational databases, we propose a novel design method considering the new features brought by NOSQL and encompassing relational and co-relational design altogether.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A Call to Arms: Revisiting Database Design

Good database design is crucial to obtain a sound, consistent database, and - in turn - good database design methodologies are the best way to achieve the right design. These methodologies are taught to most Computer Science undergraduates, as part of any Introduction to Database class. They can be considered part of the "canon", and indeed, the overall approach to database design has been unchanged for years. Moreover, none of the major database research assessments identify database design as a strategic research direction. Should we conclude that database design is a solved problem? Our thesis is that database design remains a critical unsolved problem. Hence, it should be the subject of more research. Our starting point is the observation that traditional database design is not used in practice - and if it were used it would result in designs that are not well adapted to current environments. In short, database design has failed to keep up with the times. In this paper, we put forth arguments to support our viewpoint, analyze the root causes of this situation and suggest some avenues of research.Comment: Removed spurious column break. Nothing else was change

XML document design via GN-DTD

Designing a well-structured XML document is important for the sake of readability and maintainability. More importantly, this will avoid data redundancies and update anomalies when maintaining a large quantity of XML based documents. In this paper, we propose a method to improve XML structural design by adopting graphical notations for Document Type Definitions (GN-DTD), which is used to describe the structure of an XML document at the schema level. Multiples levels of normal forms for GN-DTD are proposed on the basis of conceptual model approaches and theories of normalization. The normalization rules are applied to transform a poorly designed XML document into a well-designed based on normalized GN-DTD, which is illustrated through examples

The StarView intelligent query mechanism

The StarView interface is being developed to facilitate the retrieval of scientific and engineering data produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. While predefined screens in the interface can be used to specify many common requests, ad hoc requests require a dynamic query formulation capability. Unfortunately, logical level knowledge is too sparse to support this capability. In particular, essential formulation knowledge is lost when the domain of interest is mapped to a set of database relation schemas. Thus, a system known as QUICK has been developed that uses conceptual design knowledge to facilitate query formulation. By heuristically determining strongly associated objects at the conceptual level, QUICK is able to formulate semantically reasonable queries in response to high-level requests that specify only attributes of interest. Moreover, by exploiting constraint knowledge in the conceptual design, QUICK assures that queries are formulated quickly and will execute efficiently