Foreword
Database design is a hugely important topic, but one that is frequently overlooked. Because good database design is not dependent on a specific database product, vendors don’t usually support education in design. As a long-time certified trainer, I was always well aware that issues pertaining to design were not covered in the standard courseware, because they are so vendor independent. For many years, and many versions, Microsoft had a course called “Implementing a Database Design”, and people frequently shortened the name to “The DB Design Course”, but it was about implementation, not design. It was about how to create the database after the design was done.
Proper design is not only important for data correctness, but it can also help you to troubleshoot effectively and isolate performance issues. Sometimes, little design changes can make a huge performance difference, but to understand what changes those might be, you need to understand not only design issues in general, but also the details of your system’s actual design. And of course, the more you know, the better. But the ideal way to get the best performance from your database design is to start with a good design from the very beginning of a project.
So if no database vendor offers training courses in relational database design, how is one supposed to learn about this topic? Obviously, from books like the one you have here. Louis Davidson shows you not just how to implement a database design but how to first design your database from the stated requirements. In the first few chapters, Louis gives you a solid foundation in relational database concepts and data modeling, the difference between the logical and physical model, and the details of normalization. He goes on in the second part to show you how to take that design and create a database from it. Along the way he gives you the basics of several other database related concepts that can make an enormous difference in the performance (and thus the ultimate success) of your new database application: indexes and concurrency.
Modern relational database products have been built to allow you to create a database in minimal time and start loading data and writing queries very quickly. But if you want those queries to perform well and continue to give good performance as your database grows to gigabytes and perhaps even terabytes, you need a solid foundation of a good design. Time spent on database design is an investment with a huge return over the life of an application. You deserve to start out well, and Louis can help make that possible.
Kalen Delaney
Poulsbo, WA – November 2016