Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional

by Clare Churcher

Book Overview

The problem of how to design a database is commonly encountered by those not specifically trained and practiced in the art. This book, therefore, is written with the lay person in mind. It is shorter and more readable than the competing book. In clear and simple language, the author uses examples from her real-life experience to highlight the types of problems that can result from poor design, to motivate readers to do good design. She then goes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590597699
• ISBN13: 9781590597699
• Release Date: January 2007
• Publisher: Apress
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 7.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Very Good Book to Start With

This is a book that surely covers the basics everybody involved in database design needs to know. A first chapter, named "What Can Go Wrong", somewhat short, is all about the shortcomings that will ensue from a poorly modeled database. A summary of the development process, from problem statement to design then to implementation follows. Requirements and use cases are addressed right after. Data Modeling is addressed in the next 6 chapters, with the support of sound and sensibly chosen practical examples. Usual database design topics such as Relationship Cardinalities, Specialization, Generalization, Normalization, Constraints, etc. are well explained in a very practical way. There is not much theory in there. The Queries chapter is MS Access-oriented and, as such, does not give much insight on SQL constructs, although some are provided as examples. If your project requires serious SQL querying, you'll definitely need additional SQL book(s). This book is clearly aimed at beginners and mainly intended for small and "simple" database designs, standalone MS Access applications. If you are new to database design, this is a very good book to start with, but if your database project requires more complex design, you'll definitely need to get additional reading digging deeper into Data Modeling and SQL. The book is accessible, easily understandable and well illustrated. I've noticed no typing errors. To get the most out of this book, I would recommend putting it into application in a small standalone MS Access database design of your own, and then only moving on to further reading.

Great for the nuts and bolts of DB design

The more I get into database design, the more I keep coming back to this book, as well as Database Design Demysified. The two books are oriented toward small to medium databases, and that's the best way to learn the fundamentals. In my work for the government, I've only seen one or two decently designed databases. The true examples in the book of databases gone wrong are amazing and oh so common. Some much needed humor enlivens a dry subject in both books, and neither throws a lot of jargon at you. Database Modeling and Design (T Teorey) could never teach me how to design a good database! It just never gets down to the nitty gritty details of what works and what doesn't, and why. The two good books are complementary- I reccommend you get them both. Good Luck!

Excellent introduction to database design

This book does a great job of explaining data modeling, including how it corresponds to tables in a database. The book is well-written and very organized, and the examples do a good job of illustrating the concepts. It's also mercifully short compared to other options. It's appropriate for database beginners, and for experiences developers who are getting into database design for the first time. There's a section on how this all relates to OOP, with no focus on a specific language. The examples apply to any database systems that support standard SQL including Access and MySQL. Note that the book does not cover Access and MySQL directly -- you'll need different resources for that. For MySQL, the tutorials on the MySQL site itself are a surprisingly good place to start. This book tells you how to think about your database *before* you begin to develop it, which can be critical if you're designing anything even slightly complicated. I'm developing a Ruby on Rails web app, and this book really helped me think through some issues that I had not considered until now.

The Best Introductory Database Design Book I Could Find

While having many years of object-oriented design and programming experience, until recently I had no experience in designing or implementing relational databases. I learn by reading so I picked up several of the top-rated books on the subject. I found Clare Churcher's book to be the best by far! There are two aspects of the book I found particularly attractive. First, it is short and to the point. You can read it in a day or two and learn enough of the essentials to get started on your first database design project, I did. Second, it clearly demonstrates the relationship between object-oriented data modeling and relational database design. The latter aspect made the concepts and examples particularly easy for me to understand and I suspect it will do the same for anyone else reading this book with an object-oriented programming background. Simply a great book!

The Best Introduction For a Beginner

I have been looking for a practical yet easy to read book on relational database design and I wish I had this book when I started to read up on the subject. This book is a pleasure to read, and the author is definately an expert in the domain. This book will act as a guide during your design decisions and will give you pointers on how to get the design right the first time, helping you avoid painful reworks and mistakes. If you are new to the subject, and would like to learn more, or even if you are experienced, this book gets down to the basics of what it is you are trying to model, and teaches the steps you can take on how to do it. The book is short, sweet, to the point, and will get you modeling databases right in no time.