A year or so ago, I watched a few episodes of a Dutch television program that had an interesting format. The name of the series was (or is, I have no idea if it still runs) “Sterren op het doek” (“Stars on Canvas”). Every episode featured a Dutch celebrity, three painters, and an interviewer. For the program, the three painters each paint a ...

In an earlier post, I talked about the Jargon Principle, one of three principles I learned in 1994 and that have not only helped make me a better modeler, but that I have found to be very valuable in many other situations as well. Today, I will cover the second of those principles. The Concreteness Principle Again, not in the exact wording I ...

In one of my previous posts, I discussed whether data modeling is art or science, and I concluded that, unfortunately, the current state of affairs is that it’s closer to art than to science, whereas I would like to see the opposite. And I think that the same applies to process modeling. Back in 1994, I learned about a methodology that managed to ...

Well, we are finally here at what is the secular version of the holiday season for Microsoft SQL Server nerd types, the week of the SQLPASS Summit. This year, I am speaking 3 times and will also be doing the Quiz Bowl at the Welcome Reception, so I am going to be busy. If you are here and are interested in database design, please do stop by and ...

A brillant idea and an opportunity that no-one that works with databases (DBAs or Developers) should miss: http://www.db-class.com/ A free online course on databases: This course covers database design and the use of database management systems for applications. It includes extensive coverage of the relational model, relational algebra, and ...

In this last kind of “creative” chapter, I will look at some of the ways you implement common problems in your relational database, and some of the ways you probably shouldn’t. The “should” sections will deal with: Uniqueness – Beyond the simple uniqueness we have covered in the first chapters of the book, looking at some very realistic ...

As the book progresses, I find myself veering from the original stated outline quite a bit, because as I teach about this more (and I am teaching a daylong db design class in August at http://www.sqlsolstice.com/… shameless plug, but it is on topic :) I start to find that a given order works better. Originally I had slated myself to talk more ...

Assuming all goes as planned, I will be in Columbus, OH this Friday night and Saturday for SQL Saturday 75. I really love SQL Saturday events the best of all of the events because they are very intimate in nature. As a fairly antisocial person, I sometimes get overwhelmed by the size of other events, even the SQL Rally was just barely in my ...

Several attendees at the SQLRally were asking about NoSQL (''Not Only SQL'') and its benefits. This article gives a quick overview: HERE. Also, two good resources have come out from my friend Guy Harrison. This piece on Cassandra, one of the most popular NoSQL databases, was published a while back in Database Trends and Applications Magazine. I ...

A while back, I was working on a short article about Normalization for a book that never got published (admittedly I wasn’t getting paid for the article, and it wasn’t for charity, so I wasn’t that broken up over it.)  The task at hand was to, in 2 pages or less, describe the process of normalization and help you to know when you have ...