I’ve long neglected this blog, and the power behind it to discuss my feelings toward database design. Proper database design is the backbone to a solid application. Failing to correctly normalize tables and enforce business logic with foreign key relationships can cause undue headaches.
What I’ll be doing is going through some simple applications, and start modeling the tables and relationships, and intersperse some commentary where useful. The discussion depends on interaction, and I’m of the opinion that a ‘good’ database designer can a) defend their design articulately and b) know when to concede a good point.
Database design is becoming organic. Strict adherence to the normal forms isn’t required any longer. Let me be clear though, denormalizing a table to make things easier for a developer is not a valid reason to denormalize.
The modeling tool I’ll be using for generating the images is MySQL Workbench. Workbench is a very powerful tool, from the source of one of the most powerful (and used) databases today. I cut my teeth on database design with DBDesigner4, whose creator went on to work for MySQL Workbench.
Stay tuned.