FileMaker Tip 383 Het hart van de database: de ERD   Een ERD is een Entity Relationships Diagram. Zonder dat kloppend hart kan geen enkele database fatsoenlijk leven. Maar zo'n ding opbouwen is vaak een hele klus. En toch... Zonder gaat NIET! De meesten die dit lezen weten dat al lang, en zullen aangenaam glimlachen als ze onderstaand verhaaltje lezen. We vonden het bij Michael Harris die ons na de eerste vraag al onmiddellijk toestond het hier te publiceren. Master Po and his young student Lotus Blossom rode the glass elevator many floors up to the client’s office. Lotus Blossom carried a heavy Gucci case. Her heart, too, was heavy with fear of disappointing her teacher at this first meeting with an important customer. Wispy gray Master Po enjoyed the ride, commenting on the sights by pointing with a hand holding the only objects he carried: a single manila file folder, containing one sheet of typing paper and a #9 cedar pencil he bought from an American Indian tribe, freshly sharpened and fragrant, reminding him of the Southwest desert. The client was a large insurance brokerage, selling health and retirement plans to corporations. Two partners and an office manager waited around a conference table made from a huge piece of dark, dense tropical wood. “Tell us about your business,” said Master Po after accepting the offer of a Snapple. Thereupon followed nearly three hours of the most detailed and jumbled information Lotus Blossom had ever experienced. She had not felt so lost even in the college calculus class taught by a graduate student with an utterly impenetrable foreign accent. Still, she wrote furiously during the meeting trying to understand and record as much as possible. Master Po listened calmly, occasionally writing or erasing a few words on his single sheet of typing paper. Every so often he would stop the speaker and ask for clarification or if a certain feature were required. To the extent she could consider it during her frantic writing, Lotus Blossom was baffled at her teacher’s questions. He day-dreamed through features the clients considered most important, and yet raised extensive questions on points which seemed to the client, and to herself, to be quite minor, even irrelevant. After the meeting, once the elevator doors closed on the puzzled visages of the clients, Lotus Blossom could not prevent herself from exclaiming, “Master, I understand less about what this client needs than when we arrived. How can I proceed!” Master Po kept his gaze on the colors of the setting sun, gently handing the manila folder to his student. She set down her heavy case and opened the folder. On the single sheet, amid erasures and crossed out jottings, were the words: A record is an insurance policy. Lotus Blossom caught the mixed scents of cedar, graphite and eraser. Michael Harris Sr Partner Cerne Systems Inc ( formerly Watertechnics ) Page 14 • Issue 65 • ©1995 Watertechnics • The FileMaker Report   Terug naar het selectiemenu voor de tips.