Database Design Template

A structured template for designing and documenting relational databases. Use this as a guide when planning your schema, defining entities and relationships, and considering optimizations and limitations.

Scope

In this section you should answer the following questions:

• What is the purpose of your database?
• Which people, places, things, etc. are you including in the scope of your database?
• Which people, places, things, etc. are outside the scope of your database?

Functional Requirements

In this section you should answer the following questions:

• What should a user be able to do with your database?
• What's beyond the scope of what a user should be able to do with your database?

Representation

Entities

In this section you should answer the following questions:

• Which entities will you choose to represent in your database?
• What attributes will those entities have?
• Why did you choose the types you did?
• Why did you choose the constraints you did?

Relationships

In this section you should include your entity relationship diagram and describe the relationships between the entities in your database.

Optimizations

In this section you should answer the following questions:

• Which optimizations (e.g., indexes, views) did you create? Why?

Limitations

In this section you should answer the following questions:

• What are the limitations of your design?
• What might your database not be able to represent very well?