Chapter 10 – Using CASE Tools for Database Design

Publisher Summary A computer-aided software engineering (CASE) tool is a software package that provides support for the design and implementation of information systems. It can document a database design and provide invaluable help in maintaining the consistency of a design. By integrating many of the techniques used to document a system design—including the data dictionary, data flows, and entity relationships—CASE software can increase the consistency and accuracy of a database design. It can also ease the task of creating the diagrams that accompany a system design. There are many CASE tools on the market. The actual look of the diagrams is specific to each particular package. However, it should always be kept in mind that although some current CASE tools can verify the integrity of a data model, they cannot design the database. There is no software in the world that can examine a database environment and identify the entities, attributes, and relationships that should be represented in a database. The model created with CASE software is therefore only as good as the analysis of the database environment provided by the people using the tool.