ejoell 66477 (4/11/2013)
@majorbloodnockConcerning your remark from July 2008 about CS degreed folks having a better grasp of DB theory.
In my experience that has not been necessarily the case. Even though there is a lot of valuable information in "Book Larnin' ", I've found that these people have a tendency to create the most insanely complex databases with data stored in the fifth Normal form and five part primary keys and the worse in my opinion, manually-entered data used as the primary key.
I don't know how many times I've seen people traisping all through a database tracking down foreign keys to fix fat-fingered data. Whereas if that had been made a unique key with a generated primary key it would have only needed to be changed in one location.
On each occasion, the db designer reported that was what he or she had learned in college. So I've always had a biased viewpoint of college DB courses. I much prefer someone with experience with a knowlege of what not to do and why.
Well, they obviously had an ivory tower professor teaching the class. My classes on DB design went to 6th normal form (would probably have problems today trying to get to 4th or 5th). Had a good professor as he said we would probably never implement a database at this level of normalization. He was pragmatic, as he said normalize as far as you need to then denormalize where it makes sense. This process helps you to understand the trade offs necessary in other areas to ensure that the data is protected.
How was it some else put it, oh yea, "Normalize until it hurts, denormalize until it works."