Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 515.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 07:57:08 +0000
From: lhomich <lhomich@ualberta.ca>
Subject: RE: 16.511 data-modelling; rapid prototyping?
Dr. McCarty:
I believe that tools for rapid, simple prototypes are available to us. I'm a
person who came from the business world (where I was a computer systems
developer) into academia (I'm now a student, doing my M.A. in Humanities
Computing/English at the U. of Alberta). In my business experience, I often
used Microsoft Access as a rapid RDBMS prototying tool. It is powerful enough
to model complex relationships, and allows the developer to rapidly change
table structure and connections between tables, and to build fform-based
interfaces.
Building complex applications (in any platform that I've had experience with)
*does* require a good deal of technical knowledge, but a set of basic skills
with a tool such as MS Access is sufficient for prototyping. My approach to
prototyping is that rather that try to design something complex from the
start, I can start with somthing simple and build on from there. I've found
it's beneficial to offer the user a model which gives her something to react
to. Her responses are informed by the model I build; she has something
'concrete' to look at, and can make decisions based on her experiences the
prototype.
And, as a former database administrator, I have to stress that a thorough data
analysis and database design is of great importance to the success of any
project.
Eric Homich
M.A. Student,
Humanities Computing/English
U. of Alberta
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