Comparing Top-Down with Bottom-Up Approaches: Teaching Data Modeling

Hsiang-Jui Kung, LeeAnn Kung, Adrian Gardiner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Conceptual database design is a difficult task for novice database designers, such as students, and is also therefore particularly challenging for database educators to teach. In the teaching of database design, two general approaches are frequently emphasized: top-down and bottom-up. In this paper, we present an empirical comparison of students’ performance between these two approaches in a conceptual data modeling exercise. Our results indicate that, while prior database education had a significant effect on the quality of design performance, the chosen approach did not. Such findings appear to contradict the widely accepted view that the top-down approach is superior to the bottom-up approach.

Original languageAmerican English
JournalInformation Systems Education Journal
Volume11
StatePublished - Feb 1 2013

Keywords

  • Data model
  • Entity relationship diagram
  • Normalization
  • Relational model

DC Disciplines

  • Business Administration, Management, and Operations
  • Management Information Systems

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