Mini-World

The first step in designinig a database is to understand the business context and all the relevant interactions and transactions that take place within the business environment. This set of interactions and dynamics pertinent to the business reality can be thought of as the mini-world, a scaled-down version of a business setting that serves as the main framework for the design of a database.

A mini-world can be thought of as the model of a data base. A miniworld is a portion of the real world that can be represented in a database domain as the setting of a business activity. Examples of mini-world include a medical office, a retail business, an accounting firm etc. When we need to retrieve information from a mini-world, we handle information in a database modelled after it. When you go to a medical appointment, the receptionist will look up your name or id number in this model, a database with information of all patients. If the model keeps loyal to its miniworld, it should confirm the appointment. By the same token, we can also query the data to find information that is relevant to the business, like finding out the most frequent transactions, highest-demand products, most punctual payers etc. A miniworld can be comprised of a whole business or parts thereof (e.g.: a single department or a branch of a large corporation).