Beginning Database Design Solutions
- 8h 51m
- Rod Stephens
- John Wiley & Sons (US)
- 2009
Databases play a critical role in the business operations of most organizations; they're the central repository for critical information on products, customers, suppliers, sales, and a host of other essential information. It's no wonder that the majority of all business computing involves database applications.
With so much at stake, you'd expect most IT professionals would have a firm understanding of good database design. But in fact most learn through a painful process of trial and error, with predictably poor results.
This book provides readers with proven methods and tools for designing efficient, reliable, and secure databases. Author Rod Stephens explains how a database should be organized to ensure data integrity without sacrificing performance. He shares procedures for designing robust, flexible, and secure databases that provide a solid foundation for all of your database applications. The methods and techniques in this book can be applied to any database environment, including Oracle, Microsoft Access, SQL Server, and MySQL. You'll learn the basics of good database design and ultimately discover how to design a real-world database?
What you will learn from this book
- How to identify database requirements that meet users' needs
- Ways to build data models using a variety of modeling techniques, including entity-relational models, user-interface models, and semantic object models
- Tips for understanding the different types of databases, including relational databases, flat files, spreadsheets, XML and object databases
- How to refine and tune the design to improve database performance
- Techniques for understanding the relationship between good application design and database design
- Methods for designing flexible and robust databases that can adapt to business change and growth
- Ways to design for ease of maintenance and support
- How to avoid common database design mistakes
Who this book is for
This book is for anyone interested in learning to design, build, analyze, and understand databases. No previous experience with databases or programs is required.
About the Author
Rod Stephens started out as a mathematician but, while studying at MIT, discovered the joys of computer algorithms and programming and he's been programming professionally ever since. During his career, he has worked on a wide variety of applications in such diverse fields as telephone switching, billing, repair dispatching, tax processing, wastewater treatment, concert ticket sales, cartography, and training for professional football players.
Rod is a Microsoft Visual Basic Most Valuable Professional (MVP), consultant and author. He has written 18 books that have been translated into half a dozen different languages, and more than 250 magazine articles, mostly about Visual Basic. Currently he is a regular contributor of C# and Visual Basic articles at DevX.com.
In this Book
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Introduction
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Goals of Effective Database Design
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Database Types
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Relational Database Fundamentals
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Understanding User Needs
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Translating User Needs into Data Models
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Extracting Business Rules
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Normalizing Data
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Designing Databases to Support Software Applications
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Common Design Patterns
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Common Design Pitfalls
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User Needs and Requirements
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Building a Data Model
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Extracting Business Rules
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Normalization and Refinement
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Microsoft Access
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MySQL
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Introduction to SQL
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Building Databases with SQL Scripts
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Database Maintenance
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Database Security
