Thread: Book recommendations for designing databases?

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    l'Anziano DavidP's Avatar
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    Book recommendations for designing databases?

    Any good book recommendations for designing an SQL database for a website? I'm not a complete novice on the issue, of course. I have SQL experience and have done quite a bit of web development, but I am currently working on a web project and am having trouble designing a good scalable database for the site.
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    C++ Witch laserlight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DavidP
    Any good book recommendations for designing an SQL database for a website?
    I must point out that this is rather vague: a website might not even need a database, or it might need a database to compete with the likes of say, Facebook, Google, etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by DavidP
    I'm not a complete novice on the issue, of course. I have SQL experience and have done quite a bit of web development, but I am currently working on a web project and am having trouble designing a good scalable database for the site.
    I might suggest Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional by Clare Churcher. Even if it turns out to be too much of a beginner's book for you, at least you would get a refresher in the basics.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bjarne Stroustrup (2000-10-14)
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    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Over the years I've always fell back to Mastering SQL by Martin Gruber, Sybex. It's a 1,000 page book on everything SQL and database design. Other books try to do the same thing, but in my opinion none so comprehensively and with such a broad scope (note the title) as this book.

    Other than the one above, two other books have been inspirational/instrumental in my understanding of the relational model and how to best apply it:

    Data Model Patterns, Conventions of Though by David C. Hay, Dorset House. It's to database what Design Patterns is to software engineering. There's a slight exaggeration in there, but you get the gist.

    Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties by Joe Celko, Elsevier. It gets you into highly productive designs to better represent data structures and relationships that are hard to represent in relational database.

    I never bought any other SQL book than those three.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

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