by Matthew Pitts
If you've been following the development of ABIEE™, you know that I am in the client use development phase. Due to intellectual property concerns, I cannot disclose specific information relating to the design of the database. Generally speaking, the database design portion of an elawyering application should be given a tremendous amount of attention. Any elawyering application worth using is heavily databse dependent. The more features in play, the more complex the database will be. For ABIEE™, I am breaking down the database design process into two separate parts. One part is for the client/user portion of the application and one part is for the bankruptcy professional's portion of the application.
Data Integrity
The databse should be designed to ensure optimal data integrity and performance. Elawyering application databases are especially tricky because of the need to integrate document generation and processing requirements into the database.
Utility Database
One more complexity involved in an elawyering application's internal structure as it relates to database design, is the need for a "utility database" section. This is the term I use to refer to attributes that will not necessarily be a part of the central database. Some examples are profile information, account information, some personalization information, etc.