Slashdot Mirror
Good Database Design Books?
OneC0de writes "I am the Director of IT for a small/medium sized marketing company, where I personally write the code that runs our applications. We use a variety of technology at our office, the majority of which rely on MS-SQL and MySQL databases. I am familiar with tables, SQL queries, and have a general understanding of how the SQL databases work. What I'm looking for is a good book, particularly a newer book, to explain general database design techniques, and maybe explain some relational tables. We have some tables that have million of rows, and I'd like to know the best method of designing these tables."
He was asking for a book, not your stupid criticism.
"I am the Director of IT for a small/medium sized marketing company, where I personally write the code that runs our applications. We use a variety of technology at our office, the majority of which rely on MS-SQL and MySQL databases. I am familiar with tables, SQL queries, and have a general understanding of how the SQL databases work. What I'm looking for is a good book, particularly a newer book, to explain general database design techniques, and maybe explain some relational tables. We have some tables that have million of rows, and I'd like to know the best method of designing these tables."
There is more to RDBMS than tables and SQL. Your developers should understand data normalization first and foremost, at least 1NF, 2NF and 3NF.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_normal_form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_normal_form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_normal_form
The examples in the URLs above should suffice for getting a general understanding on how to start with a relational model. As for books, I'd suggest these:
http://www.amazon.com/Relational-Database-Design-Implementation-Third/dp/0123747309/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278630155&sr=8-4
http://www.amazon.com/Information-Modeling-Relational-Databases-Management/dp/0123735688/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278630306&sr=1-3
I would also suggest C.J. Date's "Database in Depth: Relational Theory for Practitioners", but I can imagine the local penny arcade l33t-hax0r-wannabe crowd going batshit crazy about studying relational algebra and relational database theory in depth. To each his own. Most problems that arise in poorly designed relational database models arise from not understanding data normalization
:
HTH.
The fact that he's asking Slashdot tells me that he's not comfortable letting someone else do the work, possibly because he's Superprogrammer and always knows what's best.
The fact that he's asking Slashdot tells me he's willing to listen to the lunatic ravings of people on Slashdot (such as myself), indicating that he's aware that he doesn't know best. If he thought he knew best, he wouldn't ask.
Back when those books were written, disk was expensive and not cached, RAM was very expensive, and machines had terrible I/O bottlenecks. Normalization is critical under these circumstances for maximum performance.
Normalization has _nothing_ to do with performance. In relational DB design, performance is usually considered only after you have a normalized model at which point you it's common to denormalize for performance and other implementation-specific reasons.
The parent's first link gives a good description of the purposes of normalization.
Today, these normalization techniques will increase performance but not as much as you might think. Really it is best to concentrate efforts elsewhere, especially for a one-person shop.
As the submitter looks to be using RDBMSs, a knowledge of normalization and relational database design should be required I 'd have thought. However, if their systems were designed around ORDBMS (your posts hint that this is your background) the DB design issues would be different, but the summary doesn't suggest this is the case.