Brandl’s (2005) article gives some advice to engineers about how to have databases created for them for engineering applications. Evaluate the advice he is giving from the standpoint of a database programmer who knows nothing about engineering applications. Do you think his approach will result in a successful application development? What additional ideas would you offer engineers (or anybody else) for communicating specifications accurately to database developers?
I think his advice would go a long way towards getting a good database going if someone else were designing it. It’s a good article from a quality control standpoint because it gives some basic guidelines that someone could use to critique a database to make sure that it meets the requirements that are desired. I think from a database design perspective is lacking in a lot of ways. For instance, the article only touched lightly on normalization, a lot of SQL beginner books have whole chapters devoted to normalization, and these chapters note from the beginning that they are only teaching the bare minimum that is required to normalize a database. One good book I read directed the readers to other books including a mathematical book for further reading. I think listing a few SQL programs that are on the market was a good idea, but what are the strengths and weaknesses of each? What is the level of difficulty? I think all these things need to be considered when creating a database. Maybe a database programmer can create a database if an engineer came to him or her armed with the information in this article, but I think it would help if someone (either the engineer or the database programmer) was knowledgeable about the usage of the database and the design.