Beginning Database Design

• The perfect reference for programmers, administrators, or Web designers who are new to database development and are uncertain as to how to design and structure a database efficiently
• Shows how to design and implement robust, scalable databases on any of the major relational database management systems, including Access, SQL Server, IBM DB2, MySQL, and Oracle
• Covers all the key database design steps including modeling, normalization, SQL, denormalization, object-modeling, data warehousing, and performance
• Provides plenty of real-world examples and a complete beginning-to-end case study of creating a database that includes the analysis and planning, tables and data structures, business rules, and hardware requirements

Database design involves how to best structure the tables and queries that are used with databases in order to provide optimum performance, storage, manageability, and flexibility. With relational databases, you can use those tables to organize your data and retrieve information from your database. This book provides you with an easy-to-understand explanation of designing and building relational database models to do just that.

The numerous step-by-step examples and a helpful case study simplify a potentially complex subject and present it to you in an organized, understandable manner. You''ll find out why relational database models became necessary in the first place, and how the relational database model was devised. Ultimately, you''ll discover how to make much better use of your database by applying what you''ve learned about building the database model.

What you will learn from this book

• Basic concepts of relational database modeling
• The components of a relational database model
• Making normalization easier to use
• Advanced relational database modeling
• How to improve relational database model performance
• Describing tables during using analysis (WHAT needs to be solved)
• Refining tables and relationships using design (HOW to provide solutions)
• How to read and write data with SQL
• Create relational database models by applying business rules

Who this book is for

This book is for new database developers. No prior database or programming experience is required.

Wrox Beginning guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think, providing a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

Gavin Powell has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, with numerous professional accreditations and skills (including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Windows 2000, ERWin, and Paintshop, as well as Microsoft Access, Ingres, and Oracle relational databases, plus a multitude of application development languages). He has almost 20 years of contracting, consulting, and hands-on educating experience in both software development and database administration roles. He has worked with all sorts of tools and languages, on various platforms over the years. He has lived, studied, and worked on three different continents, and is now scratching out a living as a writer, musician, and family man. He can be contacted at oracledbaexpert@earthlink.net or info@oracledbaexpert.com. His Web site at http://www.oracledbaexpert.com offers information on database modeling, database software, and many development languages. Other titles by this author include Oracle Data Warehouse Tuning for 10g (Burlington, MA: Digital Press, 2005), Oracle 9i: SQL Exam Cram 2 (1Z0-007) (Indianapolis: Que, 2004), Oracle SQL: Jumpstart with Examples (Burlington, MA: Digital Press, 2004), Oracle Performance Tuning for 9i and 10g (Burlington, MA: Digital Press, 2003), ASP Scripting (Stephens City, VA: Virtual Training Company, 2005), Oracle Performance Tuning (Stephens City, VA: Virtual Training Company, 2004), Oracle Database Administration Fundamentals II (Stephens City, VA: Virtual Training Company, 2004), Oracle Database Administration Fundamentals I (Stephens City, VA: Virtual Training Company, 2003), and Introduction to Oracle 9i and Beyond: SQL & PL/SQL (Stephens City, VA: Virtual Training Company, 2003).