Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design (3rd Edition) [Paperback] Author: Michael J. Hernandez | Language: English | ISBN:
0321884493 | Format: PDF, EPUB
Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design Free PDFYou can download Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design Free PDF from with Mediafire Link Download Link
Coverage includes
Understanding database types, models, and design terminology
Discovering what good database design can do for you—and why bad design can make your life miserable
Setting objectives for your database, and transforming those objectives into real designs
Analyzing a current database so you can identify ways to improve it
Establishing table structures and relationships, assigning primary keys, setting field specifications, and setting up views
Ensuring the appropriate level of data integrity for each application
Identifying and establishing business rules
Whatever relational database systems you use, Hernandez will help you design databases that are robust and trustworthy. Never designed a database before? Settling for inadequate generic designs? Running existing databases that need improvement? Start here.
Direct download links available for Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design Free PDF
- Series: For Mere Mortals
- Paperback: 672 pages
- Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (February 24, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0321884493
- ISBN-13: 978-0321884497
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
This book is THE book for the database beginner. It thoroughly covers design principles and process, and it covers them in depth.
The book is broken into four parts, Part I: Relational Database Design, Part II: The Design Process, Part III: Other Database Design Issues, and Part IV: Appendixes.
Part I starts with a chapter that gives the history of databases and the path we took to get where we are. It continues with a chapter that covers the reason to have a good design methodology and what the goal of the methodology should be.
Chapter three is really cool for those just getting into database design. It introduces some of the most common terminology used in the database design process. It is not just a glossary (which this book also has after the appendixes), it goes much further than just a definition and includes diagrams to help with the explanations.
Part II covers the database design process. Topics the author covers include table structures, field specifications, assigning primary keys, table relationships, views, and levels of data integrity.
Part III covers bad design and when bending the rules of proper design are ok.
The appendices (Part IV) include a summary of design guidelines, example form templates, diagram symbols, a check list of design guidelines, and an activity diagram (flowchart) of the database design process.
I have listed each part and the chapters they contain below.
Part I. Relational Database Design
1. The Relational Database
2. Design Objectives
3. Terminology
Part II. The Design Process
4. Conceptual Overview
5. Starting the Process
6. Analyzing the Current Database
7. Establishing Table Structures
8. Keys
9.
I read this book while searching for different textbooks to use in the university database course I teach.
Hernandez' method and presentation of it are distinctly different from all other books I've read on database design. The author has developed a fairly thorough approach for designing relational databases without requiring the designer to delve into the traditional mathematical jargon and occasionally difficult concepts upon which relational theory is based.
Besides the easy understandability to a layman, it seems to me the biggest values in Hernandez' approach and the book is that it is well described as sequence of operations to do with short interviews of the various stakeholders in the database's intended environment. I learned to do similar interviews pretty well through years of experience but without having been taught a method.
Although the whole method appears valid, a few limitations and drawbacks of the book surfaced on my first reading:
* The method has so many steps it isn't likely that someone can memorize it all.
* Though not surprising from the subtitle, the design method here is inextricably tied to the relational model. (I had hoped that the approach would be more generalized and then show how to produce a valid relational model from a conceptual design. The latter is the way I've been teaching up to now so Hernandez' approach loses some flexibility.)
* It's laborious: The whole method is VERY heavy on filling out lengthy forms to document each table, field, view, etc. In theory this good, but it is done in a way that could easily require my students to record 50+ pages worth of forms for their main class project before they even start to implement anything.
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