Database Reference
In-Depth Information
DoubleTree
or
Hampton Inn
. We defined
Organization
as the “company or gov-
ernment agency that needs the survey.” So we would need to have the discussion
that if
Hampton Inn
would like a survey, would
Hampton Inn
be the
Organization
Name
or would the parent company
Hilton
be the
Organization Name
? What's
very interesting is that as we start asking these normalization questions we fre-
quently refine our existing terminology and definitions. The business may decide,
for example, to store an organization hierarchy based on parent company and sub-
sidiaries. Or the business may decide just to keep track of the organization that is
paying for the survey, regardless of whether they a part of a larger organization.
Let's assume the business decides to just store the organization that is paying for
the survey and not the whole organization hierarchy.
•
Both
Organization First Survey Date
and
Completed Survey Date
contain more
than one piece of business information. Dates contain a day, month, and year. Year
contains a year, decade, century, and millennium. Sometimes we identify attributes
that do contain more than one piece of information, but there may be no value in
showing the individual pieces. In these cases, it is best to keep the attribute in its
original state as with these dates.
•
A
Survey Respondent Name
can contain more than one piece of business inform-
ation. We might, for example, have
Bob Jones
as a name which contains both the
respondent's first and last name. Weigh the
value
gained in having the attribute
broken down into its components with the
effort
potentially needed to break the at-
tribute down. Sometimes the value may not be worth the effort. The business might
determine some value in seeing the components, but if the task is large and highly
error prone, it may not be worth the development effort. In this case, let's assume
our conversation with the business ended with breaking down this name into a first
and last name.
•
A
Completed Survey
can have more than one
Completed Survey Free Form
Response Text
and more than one
Completed Survey Fixed Response Answer
.
Similar to the survey containing more than one question, the completed survey can
also return more than one answered question. For example, if a survey contains
five free form questions and ten fixed response questions, it is very possible for
the completed survey to also contain fifteen answered questions. If the survey re-
spondent left five of the questions empty, there still would be ten answered ques-
tions. We therefore need to ensure we have a many-to-many relationship between
Completed Survey
and
Survey Question
.
