Database Design

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.