Practical Issues in Database Management: A Reference for the Thinking Practitioner - Tapa blanda

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Databasics clearly explains the key concepts users and database professionals need to understand in order to build well-designed databases that answer business questions accurately and efficiently. Fabian Pascal, one of the industry's leading experts, identifies ten critical, recurring issues that both database users and vendors often fail to address appropriately. Pascal demonstrates why understanding these fundamentals is so important, providing detailed examples and solutions designed to help users escape the key pitfalls of database development. Among the topics covered: unstructured data and complex data types; business rules and enforcing data integrity; keys; duplicates; normalization; entity subtypes and supertypes; data hierarchies and recursive queries; redundancy; quota queries; and how to handle missing information. Along the way, Pascal offers no-holds-barred assessments of how well current SQL implementations and commercial products address each issue. Databasics, in short, is a complete guide to building databases right the first time, so they don't have to be rebuilt later. For all DBAs, developers, managers, and end-users that need to understand the best ways to design and implement database systems.

Contraportada

"The aim of this book is to provide a correct and up-to-date understanding of--and appreciation for--the practical aspects of crucial, yet little-understood core database issues. It identifies and clarifies certain fundamental concepts, principles, and techniques that persistently trouble users and vendors. It assesses the treatment of those issues in SQL (both the standard and commercial implementations) and gives specific guidance and practical advice on how to deal with them (and how not to). It covers, carefully and thoroughly, several particularly tricky and misunderstood topics--complex data types, missing information, data hierarchies, quota queries, and so forth--in a succinct and concise form for the busy database practitioner."

--C. J. Date

Three decades ago relational technology put the database field on a sound, scientific foundation for the first time. But the database industry--vendors, users, experts, and the trade press--has essentially flouted its principles, focusing instead on a "cookbook," product-specific approach, devoid of conceptual understanding. The consequences have been costly: DBMS products, databases, development tools, and applications don't always perform up to expectation or potential, and they can encourage the wrong questions and provide the wrong answers.

Practical Issues in Database Management is an attempt to remedy this intractable and costly situation. Written for database designers, programmers, managers, and users, it addresses the core, commonly recurring issues and problems that practitioners--even the most experienced database professionals--seem to systematically misunderstand, namely:

• Unstructured data and complex data types
• Business rules and integrity enforcement
• Keys
• Duplicates
• Normalization and denormalization
• Entity subtypes and supertypes
• Data hierarchies and recursive queries
• Redundancy
• Quota queries
• Missing information

Fabian Pascal examines these critical topics thoroughly, comparing the severe costs of mishandling them to the practical benefits of implementing the correct solutions. With an emphasis on both principles and practice,Practical Issues in Database Management employs real-world examples to provide an assessment of current technology--SQL and the DBMS products based on it--and, whenever possible, offers concrete recommendations and workarounds. With the insight provided by Practical Issues in Database Management , you will be in a far better position to evaluate specific products, exploit their capabilities, and avoid their deficiencies.

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