Patterns For Relational Database Design

I'm looking for patterns (no matter if web-site or a book) for how to design a relational database.  Some "patterns" (like normal forms) are well known and practiced but I'm looking for patterns that go beyond normalisation. Especially in terms of designing a database that's easy to map to OO.

I was searching the Net for quite a while but without results: There are many patterns for designing O/R (object/relational) mapping and DAL's (data access layers) but that's a layer that comes after a good relational database design.

Brian
Friday, December 5, 2003

So do you want how to model data such that it produces the 'correct' database?

If so Terry Halpin http://www.orm.net/halpin.html is your man.

Simon Lucy
Friday, December 5, 2003

There's a great .NET show where Terry walks you through how to do this with Visio - Enterprise Architect.  One of my favorite .NET shows.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/theshow/Episode025/default.asp

nathan
Friday, December 5, 2003

ORM is a very interesting (and with Visio surely applyable - been there, done that :)) technique but what I'm searching for something more like GoF design patterns format for "low level" relational database design (with consideration of later O/R mapping and DAL's).

Brian
Friday, December 5, 2003

(Ahhh... those pesky typos and grammar errors... sorry.)

Brian
Friday, December 5, 2003

You mean something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0471380237

or this:

http://www.agiledata.org/

??  Hard to know from the description exactly what sort of information would be useful to you.

puck
Friday, December 5, 2003

@puck

Both the book and the web-site you suggest come near.

That book is a good one. In the book many examples of working models are made. Great! But it's not the essence of database modeling extracted in the form of a pattern so that you don't need to read long chapters to learn the way of designing better databases.

Scott Ambler is on the right path and his web-site shows the way it should be done (but he's still not there).

Brian
Friday, December 5, 2003

Ummm, the pattern is the data.  That's the point of ORM, just the facts ma'am, oh and the constraints...

Simon Lucy
Friday, December 5, 2003

Although not a pattern book per se, Designing Quality Databases with IDEF1X Information Models is an excellent relational DB design book.  Someone well-versed in pattern-based programming should be able to read the text and translate the ideas into patterns for your problem domain.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0932633188/qid=1070731645/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0849587-1157654?v=glance&s=books

Matt Latourette
Saturday, December 6, 2003

www.pragmatier.com

www.simpleorm.org

Get the products|code, generate some stuff and learn from there.

Phil
Sunday, December 7, 2003

What you are looking for is david hay's data model patterns.

Karel van der Walt
Monday, December 8, 2003

Brian, I feel your pain.

I was just looking for the same kind of book. There has got to be someone out there who can write it! If you find one that fits your needs let me know!

Jim Argeropoulos
Friday, January 30, 2004

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