Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design (3rd Edition)
Michael J. Hernandez
Language: English
Pages: 672
ISBN: 0321884493
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The #1 Easy, Commonsense Guide to Database Design! Michael J. Hernandez’s best-selling Database Design for Mere Mortals® has earned worldwide respect as the clearest, simplest way to learn relational database design. Now, he’s made this hands-on, software-independent tutorial even easier, while ensuring that his design methodology is still relevant to the latest databases, applications, and best practices. Step by step, Database Design for Mere Mortals ® , Third Edition, shows you how to design databases that are soundly structured, reliable, and flexible, even in modern web applications. Hernandez guides you through everything from database planning to defining tables, fields, keys, table relationships, business rules, and views. You’ll learn practical ways to improve data integrity, how to avoid common mistakes, and when to break the rules.
Coverage includes
Understanding database types, models, and design terminology
Discovering what good database design can do for you—and why bad design can make your life miserable
Setting objectives for your database, and transforming those objectives into real designs
Analyzing a current database so you can identify ways to improve it
Establishing table structures and relationships, assigning primary keys, setting field specifications, and setting up views
Ensuring the appropriate level of data integrity for each application
Identifying and establishing business rules
Whatever relational database systems you use, Hernandez will help you design databases that are robust and trustworthy. Never designed a database before? Settling for inadequate generic designs? Running existing databases that need improvement? Start here.
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Faster and more efficient disk drives, and a printer that better meets your printing requirements will all help to greatly decrease the time it takes the RDBMS to process a complex query or report. • Fine-tune the operating system software. Make certain that the computer’s operating system is optimized for peak performance. This is especially important for networked computers and server hardware. You can greatly enhance general processing performance by working with the configuration options.
Large Shared Databanks,” Communications of the ACM, June 1970, 377–87. Chapter 2 1. C. J. Date, An Introduction to Database Systems, 7th ed. (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2000), 362; emphasis added.
The Subject-Identification Technique on the following statement: We need to maintain data on our pilots and their certifications. You now cross-check the subjects you identified in this mission objective against the items in the Preliminary Table List shown in Figure 7.7. Figure 7.7. The Preliminary Table List for a flight training school In this case, you cross out “pilots” in the mission objective statement because it already exists on the Preliminary Table List and it represents the same.
Discussion of the types of databases you’ll encounter, common database models, and a brief history of the relational database. Chapter 2, “Design Objectives,” explores why you should be concerned with design, points out the objectives and advantages of good design, and provides a brief introduction to Normalization and normal forms. Chapter 3, “Terminology,” covers the terms you need to know in order to learn and understand the design methodology presented in this book. Part II: The Design.
Can define a specification in three ways. 1. Unique: This is the default specification for all fields except those that serve as a template for other fields or those that participate within a table relationship as foreign keys. You can incorporate all but the Source Specification element for this type of specification, and the element settings you establish will apply only to the field indicated in the Field Name element. 2. Generic: This specification serves as a template for other field.