Development Phases of Database System

The Database System is developed in the following phases:

• Phase-1: Requirements Collection Phase –
  Goal of this phase is collecting correct requirements from stakeholders and users. This is only possible when user has a clear view of his needs. If user is not clear about his needs, entire process can go off track. The entire system is built on findings of this phase; hence, this is a very important stage. Following two kinds of requirements are collected in this phase:
  
  
  1. Data model requirements :
     These deal with different pieces of data that need to be stored along with their relationships with one another. The data model requirements are represented using conceptual level data models, like entity/relationship model (ER model) and Unified Modelling Language (UML).

     Note –
     UML is more popular in case of large scale software development processes.

  2. Functional requirements :
     This involves day-to-day tasks and operations that are undertaken by enterprise for which database is being developed. E.g. The functional requirements for a Hospital System would be: acquiring new medicines, maintaining doctor records, maintaining patient records, adding new patient records etc.
• Phase-2: Data Model to Representational Model Conversion Phase –
  In this phase, we need to convert the data model into a representational level model such as Relational Data Model and choose an RDBMS system (i.e., from the providers of the RDBMS system e.g. Oracle, DB2, MySQL) to create database.
• Phase-3: Functional Requirements to Application Programs Conversion Phase –
  In this phase, high level languages (HLL), like C, C++, Java etc. are used in combination with SQL to communicate with the databases and modify them, to capture the day-to-day activities of the enterprise (for which the database system is being developed).