Hi Helen, that's a nice post! I've clicked through this post because of Sonic but left with some newfound knowledge. 😁
I just want to check if I got what I'm reading right...
In short, some uses of Entity Relationship Diagrams(ERD) are:
visualization of relationships between data
serve as plans for implementing the database
communicating these plans
determine requirements
debug system
And those uses translate naturally into "Why we use ERD".
While I can clearly see how ERD is used to serve the first 3 purposes, I have no more than a vague idea on using them for 4 and 5. If possible, do you mind elaborating on using ERD to determine requirements (and what sort of requirements) as well as using them to debug systems.
Thank you so much for this wonderful post! I will probably be reading through the rest of the BI series as well 😄
P.S. I have another question that's not really related to the content of the article. The part where you add the 5 circles to show the article being part of the "Business Intelligence Series" is so cool! I just wanted to know what is it called so I can also add it to my own posts.
Thanks for the nice comments, I really enjoyed writing it.
Regarding requirements gathering, what I was trying to get across was that its part of the process we go through with stakeholders.
When building a new model there's lots of back and forth and clarification of what's required now, later and what can be delivered after go live. Ideally all the requirements are locked down early but in reality, this doesn't always happen.
At the first step, with the Conceptual Data Model, we can go back to the stakeholders to double check the requirements and do our best to avoid scope creep. Hopefully ;)
As far as debugging goes the ERD gives us a point of reference for how things 'should' work. If multiple team members are releasing changes to the model we can visually see how it fits together and where the dependencies are.
It's also helpful when doing any kind of database migration.
Excellent questions!
I really like stringing my posts together in series and use the instructions here to do so:
Hi Helen, that's a nice post! I've clicked through this post because of Sonic but left with some newfound knowledge. 😁
I just want to check if I got what I'm reading right...
In short, some uses of Entity Relationship Diagrams(ERD) are:
And those uses translate naturally into "Why we use ERD".
While I can clearly see how ERD is used to serve the first 3 purposes, I have no more than a vague idea on using them for 4 and 5. If possible, do you mind elaborating on using ERD to determine requirements (and what sort of requirements) as well as using them to debug systems.
Thank you so much for this wonderful post! I will probably be reading through the rest of the BI series as well 😄
P.S. I have another question that's not really related to the content of the article. The part where you add the 5 circles to show the article being part of the "Business Intelligence Series" is so cool! I just wanted to know what is it called so I can also add it to my own posts.
Hi Leslie,
Thanks for the nice comments, I really enjoyed writing it.
Regarding requirements gathering, what I was trying to get across was that its part of the process we go through with stakeholders.
When building a new model there's lots of back and forth and clarification of what's required now, later and what can be delivered after go live. Ideally all the requirements are locked down early but in reality, this doesn't always happen.
At the first step, with the Conceptual Data Model, we can go back to the stakeholders to double check the requirements and do our best to avoid scope creep. Hopefully ;)
As far as debugging goes the ERD gives us a point of reference for how things 'should' work. If multiple team members are releasing changes to the model we can visually see how it fits together and where the dependencies are.
It's also helpful when doing any kind of database migration.
Excellent questions!
I really like stringing my posts together in series and use the instructions here to do so:
Changelog: Create Series of Posts
Ben Halpern ・ 2 min read
I'm also a fan of the Table of Contents at the top of my posts:
How to Manage the TOC of Articles on dev.to?
🇫🇷 Boris Jamot ・ 0 min read
Thanks for replying Helen, your explanations are really clear!😄
Also, thank you for pointing me to these articles.
You're welcome, looking forward to reading more of your posts :D