Database Design - Softcover

Stephens, Ryan K.; Plew, Ronald R.

3.65

17 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0672317583 ISBN 13: 9780672317583

Publisher: Sams, 2000

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Database Design is the book you need to master the fundamentals of relational database design in today's ever-evolving world of database technologies. This book takes an approach to database design to teach the reader how to reach into the inner depths of an organization to understand the business needs, data, and daily processes that will all blend together to formulate a successful database. Much emphasis is placed on logical design as it is imperative to understand the inner workings of an organization to produce the highest quality database, while proactively eliminating future problems that are not so easy for a beginner to foresee.

Additionally, topics such as change control, business rule integration, database security implementation, and legacy database redesign are covered in detail. Examples of SQL code are shown to portray implementation tasks of a relational database. Examples are compliant with ANSI standard.

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Review:

Database design and administration may be the last refuge of the true gurus, now that visual languages have made programming more accessible and network administration certifications have proliferated to the extent that they have. Database Design explains the process of building data-storage systems to people who may have hacked around in databases before, but have never really engineered one from the ground up. Though they both specialize in Oracle work as consultants, authors Ryan Stephens and Ronald Plew remain mostly independent of implementation specifics here, focusing instead on generic relationship diagrams that illustrate structure and ANSI-standard structured query language (SQL) for code examples.

Revealing their consultancy roots, Stephens and Plew start with methods of determining business requirements and stay focused on business issues throughout their tutorials. The section on data normalization exemplifies the authors' method of explaining technical issues: they present a considerable amount of prose on why normalization (the process by which "Steve Jones," in entered data, is recognized as the same person as "Stephen P. Jones" where it is appropriate to do so) is a good idea, as well as some of its drawbacks and alternatives. They then present a series of table schema that shows how normalization works in practice. It's a worthwhile read for working and soon-to-be-working database designers. --David Wall

Topics covered: Database design for people who haven't designed databases before or who have done so without the background knowledge they should have had. The authors cover business requirements, entities and relationships, normalization, integrity maintenance, and query design. There are also sections on modifying legacy databases and implementing ancillary features such as security.

About the Author:

Frederic H. Jones, Ph.D., has been involved in database design and programming for fifteen years. He has designed and developed commercially available relational and object oriented database systems and applications, as well as database designs for clients such as GE, Westinghouse, Herman Miller Corporation, Lightolier, Moen, Carrier Corp and Electronic Arts. He is the founder of Eclat, Inc., a major database publisher in the construction industry and currently CEO of Learning Square, Inc. an Internet distance learning development and consulting firm.

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