Department of Redundancy Department

Ever wonder all the reasons that we use databases instead of file systems? While we don’t think of it too much anymore, the first reason that databases came into existence was to remove redundancies.

High Cardinality

Ensuring a Single Row Table

Learn how you can design a table that will only have one row. Always.

Having Data Modeling Standards

Today Steve talks about data modeling and how standards can transfer knowledge between developers.

First Normal Form Gets No Respect

Dr. Codd first described the relational model in a paper in Communications of the ACM (CACM 13 No 6; June 1970). Some more work followed up after that by other people, giving us normal forms and other things we have taken for granted for 50+ years.

Designing Databases for Distributed Systems

Several data management patterns have emerged for microservices and cloud-native solutions. Learn important patterns to manage data in a distributed environment.

What Is Good Database Design?

Find out how good database design is essential to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and integrity and that databases are efficient, reliable, and easy to use.

How Would You Design This: Scheduling Classes

One of the challenges for many database developers is coming up with a good design that not only meets the specifications but also performs well in queries. Relational databases often seek some level of normalization, which reduces the update load for a system but might require more effort work from developers to write queries. Many […]

How Would You Design This: Tracking Travels

A fun contest from Steve asks you to design a system that tracks travels for a fictitious business.

Combine DATE and TIME to DATETIME2 in SQL Server

The most common method on the internet for combining DATE and TIME columns in SQL Server is incorrect. This article demonstrates why that and other methods are incorrect and two lesser known high performance methods that produce correct results even for the "edge cases".