| Business databases are key to the support of organizational life. However, many database designs prove unsuccessful or require extensive maintenance once implemented. A critical part of database design is understanding what users will want the database to do. Yet, little is known about how database designers acquire this information and about what contributes to designer performance during this design stage. Understanding database requirements enjoins the designer to understand the user's world in addition to mastering database design methodology. It is thus posited that the designer must have some minimal expertise to process requirements correctly. Since expertise is domain specific, the research seeks to understand the impact of different knowledge domains, the database domain and the business domain, on designer performance.; Drawing mainly from the literature in cognitive psychology, expertise, database design, and cognitive sciences, two knowledge structures were identified that can help measure expertise and explain differences in performance among designers: schemata and scripts. Schemata correspond to a data view of the users' world, scripts correspond to a process view of that world. The research used a sample of fifty-six database designers, comprising database design practitioners and graduate students to study the impact of these different knowledge structures on designer performance. All subjects were given a complex business case and asked to produce a database conceptual design.; Three dimensions of performance were studied: time to understand, time to solve, and solution quality. Results suggested that none of the domains of knowledge, when taken alone, was sufficient to produce quality designs. Results also suggested that database schemata combined with database and business expertise was found detrimental to quality.; The implications of the research are in the areas of education, training, design methodology, group formation, and design supporting technologies. |
