Database and Data Flow Issues

The following links are views into sections of the Duwamish Books articles. For a full list of the articles, look under each individual phase in the Contents pane of this Help file.

The links document the data structures and complementary algorithms used in our catalog, inventory, and order management system.

Also see, "A Phase to Phase Guide to the Duwamish Books Data Access Strategy."

Database

The model begins as a simple Microsoft Access database for a single store. It is expanded in subsequent phases to represent multiple stores and it is converted to an SQL Server database using stored procedures.

• Capturing business processes in a simple data model
  
  
• Starting with an MS Access .mdb file database
  
  
• Modifying the database to track inventory across multiple stores
  
  
• Migrating the database to SQL Server
  
  
• Database improvements for greater scalability in Inventory update transactions in Phase 2
  
  
• Use of stored procedures in Phase 3
  
  
• Optimizing for searching
  
  
• Keyword search design
  
  
• Designing natural-language search
  
  
• Choosing where to apply indexes
  
  
• Category search
  
  
• The Phase 4 database schema
  
  
• Normalizing a database

Data flow

The code that interacts most directly with the database (and changes most between phases) is documented here.

• Preparation of a purchase order (Phase 1)
  
  
• Purchase Order object and its lifetime (Phase 1)
  
  
• Sale Order object and its lifetime (Phase 1)
  
  
• InsertSale transaction code (Phase 1 )
  
  
• InsertSale using updated DAL (Phase 2 )
  
  
• ADO disconnected recordsets as data containers
  
  
• ADO recordset as a keyed collection or a map
  
  
• Parameter types and direction (Phase 3)
  
  
• Caching long-lived data in Phase 3 catalog client
  
  
• ADO shaped query expression
  
  
• Installing multilingual data
  
  
• Using XMLDOM, the XML Document Object Model