Initial Requirements and Use Cases

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider part of the first step from real-world problem to eventual real-world solution as described in Chapter 2. First we need to make sure we really understand the problem. This may sound obvious, but it is surprising how often people set about implementing a database before they understand the problem completely. There are two things we need to do: understand what tasks all the people who will use the system need to carry out and then figure out what data we will need to store to support them. Use cases and class diagrams as shown in Figure 3-1 are a great way to start to consolidate our understanding of a problem