Tables and views should be plural. Attributes should be singular.

Tables and views represent a set of entities, not a single entity (unless the table is a singleton,...

Please do not use MS as an example of how to architect anything -- the overall quality is improving, but historically there have been plenty of mistakes. VB, anyone?...

Again: Define "lookup." What is the function of a lookup table that makes it special (i.e. deserving of a different prefix / suffix than other objects)? Can...

INSTEAD OF triggers are there to support view updatability.

So any table in an n-m relationship is a reference table? Does every table in your database with that kind of...

Why prefix views with a 'v'? Tables and views are identical as far as clients are concerned -- there is no reason to muddle your data model with that...

Okay, time for some probably-false conjecture...

In SQL Server 2005, MS has written something called SQLOS, which acts as a virtual operating system layer:

http://blogs.msdn.com/slavao/archive/2005/02/05/367816.aspx

I'm not too knowledgeable about the internals of...

HAHAHA... I was reading through it saying to myself, "why didn't they tell the MVPs?!? where's the beta program???"

Nice one Steve!

Whatever you say, Malcolm. Good luck to you.

Malcolm,

I think this definition of optimistic locking is pretty good:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?OptimisticLocking

Note that no locks are taken AT ALL in this scheme -- no shared lock, no exclusive lock. No...

Malcolm,

Read Committed is pessimistic, just not quite as pessimistic as repeatable read. Rows are locked as they are read, and no writer is able to update those rows, as...

Frank,

Exactly what I've heard (I've read the Pascal debate), and seen from personal experience talking to people who use mySQL (quote: "we just need to store some data; nothing fancy!")...

We should probably end this conversation soon since this isn't a mySQL forum -- but I was under the impression that InnoDB is...

Bob: I haven't seen support for it in open source products either, unless I've missed something. Have you seen this support?

Calvin: What constraints? No foreign key support in...

MySQL provides very little in the way of ANSI compliance, and lacks basics like constraints. Be careful when you rant on compliance and then mention one of the least...

I think PostgreSQL and Firebird are both much brighter hopes than MySQL...

But either way, SQLCLR is a lot more interesting than the SQL/PSM standard that Celko is pitching as...