Database design is a science unto itself. I have only started designing
databases myself not too long ago. If all you want to do is store the
data to interact with on a GIS or to work with each dataset individually
then probably a good place to start would be to simply load the data as
succinctly as possible i.e. one table for each major dataset. At least
from this point you can always break down and reorganize the data into
something more elaborate or efficient later on. However, if you plan on
combining datasets to arrive at various solutions then you should do
some planning (probably should so some planning regardless). I've found
the easiest approach is to figure out what questions you want to ask of
the whole database first and then work backwards. This gives you an
idea for an outline. Then you can look into normalizing the data
tables, etc.
Wikipedia has this on database normalizing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization
cheers,
willem
Andre Schoonbee wrote:
I do not have years of experience and am faced with a challenge:
My client have lots of vector data. Some are from a few years ago and they
want to load all data into postgis. The data covering a wide spectrum -
basically all spatial data for the country. This is census data, regions and
the subsequent changes to the regions, National rainfall and also regional
rainfall. Mining, roads and the changing of the roads the past 10 years.
Boreholes from 10 years ago, and subsequently replaced by pipelines.
Veterinarian data, etc...
So some of the data is national data and some is regional data. But the
regional data is not always related to the current region, because the
regions have changed in the last couple of years.
So my question: Is there a basic concept design that will cater for these
kind of scenarios? Any ideas might help
Thanks
Andre
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