Data-Oriented Design
This text uses the Martin (1990) version of Information Engineering to illustrate data-oriented design. The result of data-oriented analysis – entity-relationship diagrams, data flow diagrams, CRUD matrices, and so on – is translated into screen designs, production database designs, action diagrams, procedural structures, and security plans. Compared to other approaches, data-oriented design strongly emphasizes security, recovery, and audit controls, relating each to data and processes in the application.
In this chapter, you will learn about the concepts and terminologies for data-oriented design, analyzing data and defining system controls, and the action diagram. The action diagram shows the processing details for an application in a structured format, which can be translated into programs and modules. You will also learn about menu structure, dialogue flow, and hardware and software installation and testing.
Information Engineering Design
In this section, we discuss each activity in IE design in detail, and relate them to the ABC Video rental application. IE design topics in this section, in order of their occurrence in the application development process, include development of the following:
- data use and distribution analysis
- security, recovery, and audit controls
- action diagrams
- menu structure and dialogue flow
- hardware and software installation and testing plans