Designing Effective Database Systems

The Software Developer’s Step-by-Step Guide to Database Design.

World-renowned expert Rebecca M. Riordan has written the definitive database design book for working developers who aren’t database experts. No matter how messy or complex your data challenge, Designing Effective Database Systems shows you how to design an effective, high-performance database to solve it.

Riordan begins by thoroughly demystifying the principles of relational design, making them accessible to every professional developer. Next, she offers the field’s clearest introduction to dimensional database modeling—practical insight for designing today’s increasingly important analytical applications.

One task at a time, the author illuminates every facet of database analysis and design for both traditional databases and the dimensional databases used for data warehousing, showing how to avoid common architectural pitfalls that complicate development and reduce extensibility. The book concludes with comprehensive, expert guidance on designing databases for maximum usability.

This book will teach you to

• Understand relational database models, structures, relationships, and data integrity principles
• Define database system goals, criteria, scope, and work processes
• Construct accurate conceptual models: relationships, entities, domain analysis, and normalization
• Build efficient, secure database schema
• Master the elements of online analytical processing (OLAP) design: fact tables, dimension tables, snowflaking, and more
• Architect and construct easy, efficient interfaces for querying and reporting
• Learn from practice examples based on Microsoft’s Northwind sample database

Riordan has helped thousands of professionals master database design and development, earning Microsoft’s coveted MVP honor for her exceptional contributions. Nobody is more qualified to help you master database design and apply it in your real-world environment.