OMA: One Month App

Database Design

One of our first real technical tasks is database design. While some of this is in the back of our minds though the initial stages, it becomes more important as we start to nail down the front end interface. This is the point where we make sure everything that has been designed is taken care of from a data standpoint.

We also focus on the future scalability of the application. For instance, although we will not be allowing multiple worksheets in the initial application, we have created a table for this to tie all data to a particular worksheet from the get go. This will allow for easier implementation in the future if we choose to add this feature. At the same time, it is important to not focus too much on the future as you risk causing yourself a lot of problems for things that may never happen or could be dealt with easier down the road - be sensible.

One of the things I wanted to do on this website was share some of the tools that we use. For years I have been searching for a good and simple Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) tool for OSX. I do not have the desire to use these for every project, but I do find them useful at the beginning of projects. Last week I came across SQLEditor. I have been trying it out on this project and it seems to be about what I have been looking for.

I completed the initial database design at the end of last week and have since moved on to the actual programming. I will post more on that soon.