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• Seventh pillar - Encapsulated

  The final numbered post in this version of my “pillar” series of posts ends in the most contestable part of the design/implementation process.  Encapsulation. The concept of encapsulation is not contested (or even contestable by sane programmers Read More... Posted Friday, October 23, 2009 5:50 PM by drsql | 0 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Design, Pillars

• Sixth pillar – Well Performing

  I guess eventually I had to admit that performance matters. Whenever I speak, and in all of my books, I try to stress over and over that performance is NOT the only thing. The fact is all too much time is spent trying to make database applications run Read More... Posted Tuesday, October 13, 2009 8:57 PM by drsql | 3 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Pillars, SQL Tools, Writing

• Fifth pillar - Secure

  As I have mentioned in all of the previous posts, basic functionality is the foundation of any system. So it goes without saying that if you have just implemented a payroll system, everyone is getting paid.  To meet the basic bar that EVERYONE agrees Read More... Posted Tuesday, October 06, 2009 7:52 PM by drsql | 1 Comments Filed under: Database Design, Pillars, Security, SQL Server

• Checkpoint – Four pillars down, Three to Go

  With the previous post on the fourth pillar, I have reached the “end” of the design posts.  To review, these were: Coherent – cohesive, comprehendible, standards based, names/datatypes all make sense, needs little documentation Normal – normalized Read More... Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:32 PM by drsql | 1 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Documentation, Pillars

• The fourth pillar – Documented

  This blog probably won’t stir up a hornet’s nest or anything, but I would also expect that it would be the least popular in practice. The person who feels they can disagree with the need for a reasonable amount of documentation is probably nuts. In the Read More... Posted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 5:52 PM by drsql | 0 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Documentation, Pillars

• The third pillar – Fundamentally sound

  This one should be simple to anyone who sees it (once I decode what I mean by fundamentally… and sound…by then for sure!) In the initial post I defined this as – fundamental rules enforced such that you don’t have to check datatypes, base domains, relationships, Read More... Posted Tuesday, April 07, 2009 7:58 PM by drsql | 1 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Pillars

• The second pillar - Normal

  The first pillar was easy, since no reasonable person is going to argue that having a design that is not coherent is desirable. No matter what the type of system, any design that isn’t easy to understand is likely to be a bad design (obvious caveats are Read More... Posted Sunday, March 01, 2009 3:14 PM by drsql | 2 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Normalization, Pillars

• The first pillar – A Coherent Design

  One of the definitions on wiktionary.org for coherence is “a logical arrangements of parts ”. In my initial post, I defined “coherent” for database designs in the following manner: cohesive, comprehendible, standards based, names/datatypes all make sense, Read More... Posted Thursday, January 08, 2009 9:05 PM by drsql | 1 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Pillars

• The phases of database design

  Before I get started with the pillars of a well built database, I want to reply (in long form) to a comment on the last post. I see the phases of the project to have five distinct phases (again trying to make memorable lists that an stick in your mind): Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 16, 2008 11:43 PM by drsql | 2 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Pillars

• The N pillars of a well built database?

  As I am starting the process of writing my next edition of the database design book (over the next 3+ years) I am starting to try to come up with some catchy way of stating that a database is well designed and implemented. So I started to think of some Read More... Posted Tuesday, December 09, 2008 5:23 PM by drsql | 8 Comments Filed under: Best Practices, Database Design, Pillars