Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
14
Database Quality
Mario Piattini, Marcela Genero, Coral Calero, Macario Polo,
and Francisco Ruiz
14.1
Introduction
IS quality is one of the most pressing challenges facing organizations today.
Global, national, even local enterprises are driven by information. Many
companies have discovered how critical information is to the success of their
businesses. Yet few companies have effective ways of managing the quality of
that information, which is so important to their competitiveness.
DBs have become the essential core of ISs; therefore, their quality must
be improved as much as possible to guarantee successful ISs.
Because of the growing complexity of ISs, continuous attention to and
assessment of DB quality throughout the development process are necessary
to produce quality systems [1]. Commitment to quality in software develop-
ment is essential both to satisfy customers and to improve the productivity of
the development process [2].
Consider what we mean by the term quality. There is a bewildering
range of formal and informal definitions available [3]. Some of the most sig-
nificant ones are shown in Table 14.1.
Quality is a relative concept in that the importance of different features
varies among designers and over time. It is therefore important that any
approach to the evaluation of data models recognizes these differences and
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