BEHIND THE SCENES OF MY CASE STUDY
research
In a market where there is an abundance of products, there is also an abundance of reviews and information about products that is available. Two of the biggest cosmetic retailers are Ulta and Sephora. These sites are where I went when figuring out which were the most popular products to start researching. On top of retailer and manufacturer sites, there are also sites that focus on the reviewing of products such as beautypedia.com and reissue.com.
I used a combination of these sites to find out information about every top-rated product from what its purpose was, to the size, and ingredients. As I mentioned the goal of my case study was to make it easy to discover the best products based on whatever criteria were needed from price per ounce to brand. I used Sephora, Ulta, and Reissue mainly for the purpose of finding information about the product such as the ingredients, prices, size, and information about the brand. I then turned to BeautyPedia for information about the rating as they have experts that rate the product as well as community members.
Sephora
Ulta
BeautyPedia
Reissue
designing my database
After completing my initial research I had to start conceptualizing what my database was going to look like so that it would be able to be used in the way that I was intending. I begin first by creating a list of what I imagined each table would be and then started generating ideas about what sort of entities would be in each table. During this process is when I realized the true goal of my case study.
Originally I had thought that it would be more about the brand, but as I begin planning my database I realized that it was truly focusing on the products and details about the products and that the brand was only a small part of that. Once I figured this out it was easy to decide where each of the entities would be in what table and where the relationships would happen.
My ER Diagram
