JCK - A Veteran-Owned Small Business		 EXCELLENCE IN DATA ARCHITECTURE

since 1989

America Support You		 4348 Pine Grove Ave
Fort Gratiot MI USA
48059-3732
V: 810 982-8639
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The Weakest Link in Business

Data Structure and User Reality

Business Events and Mathematical Modeling



What is User Focused Data Architecture? 		We've got a library of plays written by various authors. Every spring and fall we decide to put on a certain play. This effort is called a production. We determine which of our volunteers will play which roles – yes, we have set roles, such as male lead, stage director, producer, and so forth. Of course, we also publish the schedule of the shows. Each production might have anywhere between six and twelve shows. These shows might be at any one of a number of venues. We want to put up a website where people can go to see what productions we're doing, who is in them, and when and where the shows are."

Below is an example of a data structure that reflects this user's reality:

Can you see how the user’s description gets cleanly mapped to the entries in the table? How all the data pertinent to the volunteers gets captured in the Volunteers table? How, when a volunteer plays a role in a production, the Volunteer Production Role table makes it easy to record the Production, the Role, the Volunteer, and the Description? And how easy it would be to produce not only a schedule, but a playbill? This is because the data structure accurately reflects the user’s reality.
 

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Since 1989, JCK has been devoted to teaching and implementing the principles of User-Focused Data Architecture. UFDA is based on the principle that the users are the data experts in any organization. Sound data architecture should focus on extracting the user's knowledge, clarifying ambiguous defintions, and building understandable data structures. These definitions and structures serve as the basis for system development. The first and most well known UFDA technique is Extended Relational Analysis ™ (ERA), which has been proven for decades. More recent techniques include Business Event Analysis & Modeling ™ (BEAM), which is useful for both Transactional Systems (BEAM TSS) and Decision Support Systems (BEAM DSS).