Center for Farm Financial Management, University of Minnesota
The Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) is a unit in the
Department of Applied Economics of the University of Minnesota.
Since 1984, CFFM’s mission has been to develop farm financial
management education and software to serve farm and ranch
families and other professionals who work with them. CFFM
purchased DeZign for Databases V3 in 2005, and has since
upgraded to V4 and V5. Five developers at CFFM, including
spokesperson Wynn Richardson, use DeZign for Databases for the
development of ‘FINPACK’. At CFFM they describe DeZign as:
“very solid, and easy to use. We have come to rely on two tools
for development: Delphi and DeZign for Databases”.
Database-neutral software
CFFM’s founding project is ‘FINPACK’, a software package used
by farmers and ranchers, educators, and lenders to help with
financial planning and analysis. ‘FINPACK’ is the reason why CFFM
started using DeZign for Databases in 2005, Wynn Richardson
explains why: “We began a major upgrade of our main software
product ‘FINPACK’. This upgrade involved moving from our own
legacy file format to a more open database format and we
needed a tool to help with the design and maintenance of the
overall structure as we moved through the upgrade. We also
needed a tool that could emit the structure to different database
servers. Our intent with this version is to be as database-neutral as
possible, and DeZign allows us to do this”.
The Delphi 'feel'
Apart from DeZign’s support for multiple database platforms, the
other reasons CFFM chose DeZign for Databases for the job,
opposed to their former data-modeling tool ERWIN, is because:
“DeZign had the features that we wanted at a reasonable price.
We needed a database-modeling tool that would allow us to
remain database-neutral, help us manage updates to the model
and roll those updates out to the users, and of course develop a
quality model with referential integrity. It is a good product, and
doesn’t have too many ‘bells and whistles’ to get in the way of
doing the work. And we like the Delphi ‘feel’”.
Text-based DeZign files
Another thing about DeZign that is well liked by CFFM, is that the
DeZign files are text-based. This is useful for CFFM because they use
StarTeam for all version control and through the text-based files,
they can do merges in a ‘pinch’.
Versioning with DeZign
Five people use DeZign for Databases at CFFM, for different
purposes. Two developers use it to edit the database design;
three others use it to review the structure during software
development. Versioning the models between updates and
comparing versions are the two features that are most used by
CFFM, Wynn Richardson explains:
“Our database model for FINPACK is relatively large. The main
database has 237 entities with 218 relationships. We started the
initial design in February 2005 and began development on the
software several months later.”
“In 2007, we began a beta test of the software with a select group
of users. An issue we have had with beta tests in the past is data
loss – we make a change to the software and/or the underlying
data file that would potentially “break” data files from a previous
release. We have some users with 15+ years of financial history,
so this puts a damper on testers. We knew we would be building
large portions of the software while the test was happening, so we
built a system to utilize the versioning capability of DeZign.”
“When a beta release is made, we create a version of the model
in DeZign and compare it to the version from the previous release.
We then create SQL statements that will update a previous version
of the database to the current version. Over the course of the
beta test we made over 750 changes to the database model and
no beta tester lost any data. They didn’t even realize what was
happening.”
Database quality
DeZign for Databases improves the quality of the databases at
CFFM. Wynn Richardson explains why: “The hints and warnings
while checking the model are just like compiling the software.
You always forget something somewhere. You’ll forget to specify
the primary key on a table or miss a relationship setting. DeZign
checks for these types of things and more. If we had done this the
old fashioned way, either through Access or SQL Enterprise
Manager, the resulting database would have been very sloppy.
DeZign is all about developing and deploying a quality database,
over and over again”.
Feature improvement
CFFM noticed improvement in DeZign for Databases over time.
According to CFFM some good features were made to DeZign
over the past couple updates. After having recently upgraded to
V5, Wynn Richardson says: “I haven’t yet had to use the feature in
Version 5 where it compares the model to an existing database,
but I can see where it might be very useful”.
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CUSTOMER CASE STUDY
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Company:
Center for Farm Financial
Management,
University of Minnesota
Product:
DeZign for Databases Expert
Key benefits:
- Multiple databases support
- Feature improvement
- Can manage large models
- Text-based files
- The ‘Delphi’ feel
- “Very solid, and easy to use”
Field of industry:
Agriculture, Farm
Management, Credit
Analysis
Name spokesperson:
Wynn Richardson
Website:
www.cffm.umn.edu
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