¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Data management is extremely important on the back-end side of a project, which is where I’m situated right now. Honestly, data management is most of what I need to do. The most important aspect of it (and will eventually affect how the data is sent to and from the front-end) is how the data tables will be laid out. To achieve this, I’ve begun work on something called an entity-relationship diagram. Some of you might recall that I wrote a blog post about them last semester. They are a way to lay out exactly what the tables will be, what attributes they will have, and how they connect to each other. For the data management plan, we need to know that our database is workable.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 I went about making a very rough diagram and came out with four distinct tables. The first will be for users and their login info, the second will be for users and their profile info (email, name, etc…), the third will be for XML posts (date posted, text of it, author and name of poem), and the last is for connecting the user table to the posts table. Of course, this is still subject to change based on how the project will morph over the coming weeks and months. There might be tables we don’t even know we need right now.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 For the database itself, we’ve decided to go with cloud storage and use a free database like PostgreSQL or MongoDB. This will then be connected to our web app on the back-end. It’s important for any data management plan to know where this data will be stored and have a trusted database technology behind it. PostgreSQL and MongoDB are scalable and can be used easily at the start and can continue to function well beyond the early scope of this project. These are also up-to-date and modern, and are used throughout the field of data management. There’s very little concern that they will be deprecated any time soon. Using these should help to show that we have an understanding of the potential longevity of the project.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 To sum everything up, my research into what technologies to use and how to use them are going to be affected by the data management plan. What we’re storing and how the app will work will determine how I go about building the database in the end.