The third article in our series on normalization from Tom Thomson continues with an explanation on what constitutes third normal form.  Read more...

There is a popular design for a database that requires a built-in audit-trail of amendments and additions, where data is never deleted, but superseded by a later version. Whilst this is conceptually simple, it has always made reporting the latest version of data complicated. Alex Kuznetsov joins the debate on the best way of doing this with an example using an indexed view and the filtered index.  Read more...

In this article Tom Thomson takes a look at what second normal form means, how it is violated, and how you can fix it. This is part of our normalization series.  Read more...

Implementing a queue table in SQL server  Read more...

Learn the basics of first normal form and what that means to a database designer from Tom Thomson.  Read more...

Identifiers aren't locators, and they aren't pointers or links either. They are a logical concept in a relational database, and, unlike the more traditional methods of accessing data, don't derive from the way that data gets stored. Identifiers uniquely identify members of the set, and it should be possible to validate and verify them. Celko somehow involves watches and taxi cabs to illustrate the point.  Read more...

A great deal of the confusion that occurs when a database application is developed comes from a poor understanding of the basics of data. Here, Joe Celko gives a broad coverage of the difficulties you're likely to meet when handling data in databases  Read more...

When Agile meets 'Big Design', the result can be frustration on both sides. Is it possible for database development to to easily coexist with Agile methodologies for application development? Nick suggests that the technical solutions already exist, and the dissonance is more due to cultural and organizational problems  Read more...

An interesting mystery on why some nHibernate performance issues might exist on your systems. Read this piece from SQL Server expert David Poole and look to see if this is a problem you can easily solve in your environment.  Read more...

I’ve explained the database design process in a series of articles that you can find here. In this tutorial, I’ll put that information to good use and design a database from the start of the process to the finish. To keep this example to a single article, I’ll not repeat the information from those previous articles, so make sure you look those over before reading this one.  Read more...

Once, when disk space was at a premium, DBAs fought hard to keep the size of their database down. Now there seems less motivation to 'fight the flab' of a database. Fabiano Amorim was watching television recently when the subject matter, cosmetic surgery, gave him the theme and inspiration for this guide to keeping your database fit and trim.  Read more...

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Lookup tables can be a force for good in a relational database. Whereas the 'One True Lookup Table' remains a classic of bad database design, an auxiliary table that holds static data, and is used to lookup values, still has powerful magic. Joe Celko explains....   Read more...

When designing a database to support applications you need to consider how you are going to handle primary keys. This article explores natural and surrogate keys, and discusses the pros and cons of each, allowing you to determine what makes the best sense in your environment when you are designing your databases.   Read more...

An introduction to database design for those people that might not understand what is involved.  Read more...

As a guideline, clustered Indexes should be Narrow, Unique, Static and Ever Increasing (NUSE). Michelle Ufford Explains why.   Read more...

This article demonstrates the relative merits of natural and surrogate keys and benchmarks their performance in different scenarios.  Read more...

People often conclude that the cheap price of storage is a license to use as much as possible, but there is a cost.  Read more...

Normalization is standard practice in database design, however, an over-normalized database can have issues. This article examines the case for denormalization.  Read more...

This article attempts to show a practical scenario on improving DB design and performance through row density and compression in Microsoft SQL Server 2008.  Read more...