There are two phases to the Database Design Process. The first half of the process is independent of the Database Management System (DBMS) you choose to use. The details of the second phase will be determined by your DBMS choice.
First Phase
The first phase includes:
- Requirements Collection and Analysis: Understanding and documenting the data requirements of the end users
- Conceptual Design
- Creating a conceptual schema using conceptual model
- Expressing users’ data requirements, data types, relationships, and constraints using concepts provided by data model
- Specifying properties of data without being concerned about the storage structure
Second Phase
The second phase includes:
- Logical Design: Transforming the conceptual schema to a logical schema that is based on the database technology category, e.g. relational database, that you have decided to implement.
- Physical Design: Internal storage structure and file organizations for the specific DBMS that you have chosen, e.g. MySQL.
- physical schema is a translation of the logical schema and determines how data is to be represented and stored (files, indices, etc.) in secondary storage using a particular DBMS.
