Waypoints: Design Overview

Database design: During the initial stages of our database development effort, we spent a great deal of time in the design process. After conducting interviews with personnel in the historian's office, we better understood their current processes and user needs. With knowledge of current archiving, storage, and documentation processes, we began database design based on the premise that the system would contain information on all of the different types of materials managed by the historian's office - whether or not they were physically stored in Washington, D.C. This includes artwork, historic documents, oral histories, photographs, video, and physical artifacts.

Our entity relationship (ER) diagram and data dictionary summaries provide an explanation of how the database evolved between milestones.