May 2, 2011 at 6:10 pm
I'm not necessarily looking for validation here, but a way to capture and consider linking things together. I can foresee that someone says they work at Wal-Mart and the application would in some sense ask the user to validate is this "the wal-mart" or some other one. Then either link them to an entry already in the list or not link them.
The ideas you have presented lend themselves to analysts or executives asking those questions at some point and if you haven't considered that I want some master list, even if un-certified as correct, you could run into trouble.
Ultimately you know your system best and can talk to people, but I would consider that there needs to be a master list in each area, even if it is an editable list.
May 2, 2011 at 8:18 pm
I do not intend to be disrespectful but what is the definition of a "record - A record (maybe a certificate) entered by the user and associated with an organization".
The exception not the norm can burn you.
I'm not sure that you have all of you entities defined.
Asking questions does not have to be asked from someone high up on the food chain because with rare exception executives usually don't know the details of the business depending upon their management style.
If you have or can develop the skill to ask the questions directly then you have an advantage over you peers.
Respectfully,
Welsh
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May 5, 2011 at 7:47 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (5/2/2011)
I'm not necessarily looking for validation here, but a way to capture and consider linking things together. I can foresee that someone says they work at Wal-Mart and the application would in some sense ask the user to validate is this "the wal-mart" or some other one. Then either link them to an entry already in the list or not link them.
That's actually what I'm planning for. It doesn't exist in the application currently, but I would like to see where if someone goes to hit "Save" after entering a user-defined organization, it does something like pulls up a list of organizations that might match. Like Google's "Did you mean..."
Welsh Corgi (5/2/2011)
I do not intend to be disrespectful but what is the definition of a "record - A record (maybe a certificate) entered by the user and associated with an organization".The exception not the norm can burn you.
I'm not sure that you have all of you entities defined.
Asking questions does not have to be asked from someone high up on the food chain because with rare exception executives usually don't know the details of the business depending upon their management style.
If you have or can develop the skill to ask the questions directly then you have an advantage over you peers.
Respectfully,
Welsh
No disrespect taken. I have no problem talking to someone high up. My boss is the president of my company. 😛 There's only 4 of us here.
My intention was to be vague about the idea of "records" as to not distract from what I was looking for with the organizations, but I see now that it added more confusion. Here are a stripped down example of training records.
user - Users
user_id INT PK
user_name NVARCHAR
user_id, user_name
1, 'Fred'
2, 'Steve'
3, 'Mary'
training_record - Information about training received
training_record_id INT PK
user_id INT FK
start_date DATETIME
end_date DATETIME
course_title NVARCHAR
description NVARCHAR
training_record_id, user_id, start_date, end_date, course_title, description
1, 1, '4/3/2011', '4/5/2011', 'Learning to Fix X on Y', 'I learned to fix X on Y.'
2, 1, '4/6/2011', '4/8/2011', 'Learning to Fix Y on X', 'I learned to fix Y on X.'
3, 2, '5/1/2011', '5/1/2011', 'How to Diagnose Z', 'I learned to diagnose Z.'
The basic business requirement of a training record is that a user can enter information about training they have received, so they can produce a resume of accomplishments. An additional feature of that is that the user could show where the training came from, but it's not required. These requirements are essentially the same for several other entities in our software (each with its own table), and have been documented. My main project right now is going over that documentation, updating it, and refactoring any of the parts of the database that don't match up with the business requirements.
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