Logical Design

The database logical design is the process of creating a conceptual schema or data model of a database. This process involves identifying the entities, attributes, and relationships that are important to the organization or system being modeled. The goal of the logical design is to create a high-level representation of the data that is independent of any specific database management system or implementation.

The logical design is typically created using entity-relationship (ER) modeling or a similar approach. The resulting schema is often depicted in a diagram that shows the entities, attributes, and relationships, as well as any constraints or business rules that apply to the data.

The logical design is an important step in the database design process because it provides a clear understanding of the data and how it relates to the organization or system being modeled. This understanding is essential for creating an efficient and effective physical database design, which involves mapping the logical schema onto a specific database management system and optimizing the database for performance and storage.

In the logical design the elements are called:

The logical design can be started from the DbSchema welcome screen.

Design new entities by right-clicking the layout diagram.

Create relations by drag & drop of one field over the target field. Relations can have a type (identifying, non-identifying...), mandatory and cardinality.

The Naming Dictionary

The naming dictionary stores how the logical names should be mapped into physical names.

Open the naming dictionary from the Deploy menu. Entities, attributes and relations names will be generated by replacing the logical keywords with the physical keywords.

The Conversion Dictionary

The Conversion Dictionary stores the mapping between the logical data types and the physical data types. This can be defined individually for each database.

Generate Physical Design from Logical Design

From the Deploy menu, generate the physical design.