One of the most common mistakes that organizations/teams make is not hiring a Database Consultant at the start of the project.

You might think that this is such a silly mistake and people should not do it, however trust me, they don’t and they do it again and again.

At the start of the project most of the times the team just want to hire a UI expert and want to start asap. The UI person creates a webpage and the associated events and later realizes that he/she needs to store the data somewhere (wow!!!) and creates a table and this activity goes on for every page or click the UI person is creating.

This leads to a Database design which is neither scalable, compatible and you can just imagine the performance and latency issues that you will get into.

Solution:

Database design is the foundation of a well-performing database.

Would you ever consider building a house without a blueprint? The foundation to your Applications, Interfaces and Systems is the database. To ensure that your database will be a good foundation for your applications and programs that rely on it, build it right in the beginning.

What Organizations need to do is to hire a Database consultant at the start of the project and let him design and decide the Data model and the Architecture. If there are budget constraints, at least get .5 FTE from some other project for some time and let him design the Database keeping in mind the environment you are working on. Trust me, this will go a long way for your application. Applications which are designed in such a manner can withstand latency, scalability, availability and compatibility issues in far better manner than others.

The benefits of building it right are many. Just as you would never consider building a house without thoughtful design and planning, so should you approach database design. Imagine the building architect who is designing to your specifications. You’ll be asked questions like “How will you use this?”, “What are your future plans?”, “What do you want this to look like?”, “How do you want it to work?” Asking these same questions when you’re building a database will give you the same usability and “livability” that you’ll get out of a well-designed house.

Properly tuned and deployed Database designs will go a very long way toward ensuring your database environment is functioning at optimal levels. It also ensures that all your stakeholders your Technical architects, DBAs, UI team, Domain managers, users and even business intelligence and applications teams are aligned and working together efficiently.

Happy Designing !!!!