Week 10 : Research Methodology

            Problem Identification & Planning

Problem identification & planning is the first phase in this project methodology. In this current phase, researcher is responsible into understanding the current system by observing the system and operate the system to indicate the system functionality and gain deep knowledge of the system context.

By identifying system main function and the problem faced by it, the researcher will be able to identify the goal, objectives, scope and significance of the project whether this research will help to improvise current system or not. The objectives is the most crucial part of the studies to determine whether the research is succesful or not. Document and report review also being made in order to get a full understanding of the system.

After the problem, goal, objectives, scope and significance of the project is identify, project planning need to be done. A task related to the project is being construct and properly planned. At the end of this phase, the deliverables is project proposal which contain all of the project details.

            Data Analysis & Logical Modeling

In the data analysis & logical modeling phase, the current system physical data model is being analyze to determine all of the database structure of the current system. In analyzing current physical data model, few process needs to be done which is the tables and fields in the database need to be determine.

By recognizing and identifying the tables and fields in the current database, adding into knowledge the current system functionality by observation and system operation in phase one, logical design can be construct for the current database.

Using the logical design that has been construct, entity-relationship diagram can be developed to map the current database situation. The connections among tables and columns are known as relationships.

Mapping relationships involves:

• Listing the columns: the primary keys, the foreign keys, and the non-keys

• Identifying the logical connections between tables and columns

• Recording tables and columns on a single table or graphic representation

  of the database. This graphic representation is known as the entity relationship

  (E-R) map.

            Normalization

The normalization represents the logical project of a database. The main goal of a logical project is to create correct relational diagrams. For this it should be:

• avoided the redundancies, avoided the insert anomalies

• ensured the representation of the relations between attributes

• facilitated the verification of the updates, which should not force the integrity of the       database.

In simple words, normalization act to split a table in many tables to eliminate redundancies of data which generates update anomalies. In this research, the normalization phase will undergo three stages which are 1^st Normal Form (1NF), 2^nd Normal Form (2NF) and 3^rd Normal Form (3NF).

            Physical Modeling

In the last phase, physical modeling is being construct maped based on the new optimized logical model. This is to show a difference between optimized data model and the original data model. The deliverables for this phased is a newly optimized physical data model.