How to create a Database

Whether you want to create a database for your business or for someone else, I will guide you through the steps of how you can create a database.

A database is something used to store a large amount of data. you can save your data in files, but then the retrieval of that data will be a very cumbersome job, because you will have to write a code for that. If you are more interested in finding out the difference between storing your data in files vs database, you can find it here.

Step 1

The first thing you need to do to create a database is to collect all the requirements of the business. what is the data that needs to be stored. for example, if you are creating a database for a super store, then your database requirements will be to store all the data about the products in the store, all the data about the sales etc. gathering the requirements is not an easy step. you will need to have many meetings with the stakeholders and you will need to understand the business well.

Step 2

once you have all the requirements, then the next step is to create a conceptual model called ERD (entity relationship diagram).

ERD is a diagram which represents the whole business. It’s a business model. while creating the ERD, you figure out all the entities (a person, object, place or anything about which you want to store data) and how these different entities relate to each other to make the business work. You can create an ERD on a page but there are many professional tools available to make that job easy and clean. one such example is microsoft visio. find more on ERD here.

Step 3

once you have created the ERD, the next step is to transform that diagram into relations. Think of relations as tables, but a relation is called a table when it is physically implemented using some DBMS. A relational database is the one which is built on the relational data model, which basically means that your database is made up of relations (or tables) linked together. when you transform an ERD into a relational schema, you get a way more simple diagram which consists of a set of relations and how they relate to each other. You can then physically implement that relational schema into a relational database. Every entity in our ERD makes a separate relation. There is a proper set of rules on how to create relations from an ERD. checkout more on how to transform an ERD to relational schema.

Step 4

once you have relations (or relational schema), you have to perform another step called normalization in order to make sure that you have well structured relations which you can implement as tables. normalization is the step of transforming a relation which is not well structured into smaller and well structured relations. normalization guarantees that you will able to insert, delete or update any data in your database. That’s why, normalization is an extremely important step because you don’t want your database to bother you when you are inserting a new record in the future (or deleting or updating). find more on normalization here.

Step 5

now when you have well structured relations (free of anomalies), you are ready to physically create a database. At this stage, you have different options. you can use any DMBS you want, such as Oracle, Mysql, MS access etc. You have to decide that depending upon your business for which you are creating the database. If the business is small to medium, then MS access is the best choice. Don’t go for other technologies like oracle etc, unless you have a very huge amount of data to store. MS access does a pretty well job.

Let’s assume that you have decided to create your physical database software using MS access. Then you will need to implement the relations as MS access tables and link them according to the relational schema that you created earlier. more about MS access here.

Conclusion

now a days, a database is the requirement for every business because every business is creating a significant amount of data that can not be held in files anymore. Creating a database is not an easy job as you have to understand the business side as well as the technical side. But if you follow the right steps, then it becomes much easier.