From: Todd Benson <caduceass@...>
Date: 2008-12-09T06:41:51+09:00
Subject: Re: database design

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 9:45 AM, Coey Minear <cminear@securecomputing.com> wrote:
> One book that I would definitely recommend is "Mastering Data
> Modeling" by John Carlis and Joseph Maguire:
> http://www.amazon.com/dp/020170045X
>
> (Full disclosure: my graduate database course was taught by John
> Carlis, and he was my faculty advisor for my Masters project.)
>
> The book's focus is on creating logical data structures (LDS), which
> are diagrams of the data you are interested in tracking.  And from
> that point of view, the book is beyond database-agnostic; the data
> could be stored on index cards for all they care.  The point is to
> make you think about what is important to be stored in the first
> place, and how it relates to other data.  (One of the last chapters
> does cover how to turn an LDS into a database schema.)
>
> The book is extremely easy to read, and it has frequent "Story
> Interludes" where the authors tell a story from their own experience
> to help enforce a subject that was recently covered or to just give
> some advice with making your own LDS's.  And if you are able to follow
> the process with your own data, you don't have to worry about
> "normalization", because the data will have normalized itself.

I'll check the book out, but, I'm severely skeptical, having read
Chris Date, Celko, Vadim Tropashko.  Data does not normalize itself,
and even if it did, that would not make it the best model.  Maybe
those authors cover that aspect.  I'll definitely hit the local book
store and see if they have it.

Thanks for the info,

Todd