What a Database Does
What must remain true about the business record when people edit, archive, export, or restore it? Define which information is authoritative, who owns it, and what must remain true as it changes.
What You Will Be Able to Decide
- Explain what a database does in product and business terms.
- Apply this decision: Define which information is authoritative, who owns it, and what must remain true as it changes.
- Recognise this material risk: the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.
- Use this review: Use one CRM contact and its related opportunity to test missing values, duplicate records, deletion, and restore.
A founder is deciding how the product should remember information and preserve its meaning over time. This lesson gives you a concrete question to take into a build brief, proposal review, or product decision.
What must remain true about the business record when people edit, archive, export, or restore it? The course example is A lightweight CRM for a two-person sales team; use it to decide what evidence would justify the choice before a builder implements it.
What Does What a Database Does Mean for Your Product?
A founder is deciding how the product should remember information and preserve its meaning over time.
Use the illustrative service for this course (A lightweight CRM for a two-person sales team) to make the choice concrete. What must remain true about the business record when people edit, archive, export, or restore it?
Technical term
What a Database Does
A database stores and retrieves structured product information while enforcing selected rules about its shape, identity, and relationships.
How Should a Founder Use What a Database Does?
For a lightweight crm for a two-person sales team, ask what would happen if the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.
For this decision, the useful standard is that the data model can represent the real business rules without ambiguity or silent corruption.
- Decision: Define which information is authoritative, who owns it, and what must remain true as it changes.
- Evidence to request: show that the data model can represent the real business rules without ambiguity or silent corruption.
- Owner: name who will respond if the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.
- Record the result in the data model and recovery plan.
- Practical review: Use one CRM contact and its related opportunity to test missing values, duplicate records, deletion, and restore.
How Do You Choose an Approach to What a Database Does?
What must remain true about the business record when people edit, archive, export, or restore it? Define which information is authoritative, who owns it, and what must remain true as it changes.
The risk is that the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully. Compare a simpler option with the proposed one, including who will operate either choice.
- Describe the user or business outcome that must be protected.
- Identify the most credible failure and its consequence.
- Compare the simplest adequate approach with one realistic alternative.
- Set a review point for when the decision may need to change.
What Evidence Should You Accept for What a Database Does?
What Warning Signs Should You Look For?
- The proposal does not address this risk: the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.
- Nobody can show whether the data model can represent the real business rules without ambiguity or silent corruption.
- The decision has no named owner or review point.
What Should You Ask a Consultant?
- What changes for the user if we choose this approach to what a database does?
- How have we reduced or accepted this risk: the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.
- Can you demonstrate that the data model can represent the real business rules without ambiguity or silent corruption?
- Who owns the result, and when will we reconsider it?
Key takeaway
Key Takeaway
Define which information is authoritative, who owns it, and what must remain true as it changes. Ask for evidence against the specific risk: the product's memory becomes inconsistent even though individual screens appear to save successfully.