Tagged Questions

12
votes
6answers
964 views

In plain English, what is a database index most similar to?

Setup: Suppose you are teaching an introduction to Databases class, the students are CS students that have a working knowledge of tree structures, how they can speed up searches, and have probably ...
11
votes
10answers
809 views

How could RDBMSes be considered a fad?

Completing my Computing A-level in 2003 and getting a degree in Computing in 2007, and learning my trade in a company with a lot of SQL usage, I was brought up on the idea of Relational Databases ...
10
votes
1answer
2k views

When should you use a document vs relational vs graph database? [closed]

For the purposes of discussion let's consider a FourSquare scenario. Scenario Entities: Users Places Relationships: Checkins: users <-> places, many to many Friends: users <-> users, ...
7
votes
5answers
462 views

Predicting advantages of database denormalization

I was always taught to strive for the highest Normal Form of database normalization, and we were taught Bernstein's Synthesis algorithm to achieve 3NF. This is all very well and it feels nice to ...
6
votes
2answers
288 views

What are some useful resources for learning tuple calculus?

I've been trying to go over my tuple calculus over and over again. What's worse is that my professor and tutors are not much help during their hours. Does anyone know a good place to learn about ...
3
votes
3answers
153 views

How should I represent an enumerated type in a relational database?

I am working on developing a relational database that tracks transactions that occur on a device I'm working on for my company. There are different types of transactions that could occur on the ...
3
votes
3answers
341 views

Which aspect of normal forms do entity-attribute-value tables violate, if any?

I'm not asking if EAV tables are good or bad. I'm wondering if they are considered "normalized", and if not, why? If they aren't normalized, which normal form are they violating and why?
2
votes
2answers
79 views

Should database-models (conceptual or physical) be reviewed by DBAs?

Where I work, new applications that are being developed that will use their own relational database, must have their database-models (conceptual, then physical ) reviewed and aproved by DBAs. Things ...
2
votes
1answer
107 views

Designing persistence schema for BigTable on AppEngine

I have tried to design the datastore schema for a very small application. That schema would have been very simple, if not trivial, using a relational database with foreign keys, many-to-many ...
1
vote
2answers
517 views

Storing translation data as JSON column

We're deciding on how to store translations of some descriptions of database items. We could go the traditional way and keep a translations table (and a language table and an object_translation ...
1
vote
1answer
87 views

Handling subscriptions, balances and pricing plan changes

Preamble My aim is to create reusable code for multiple projects (and also publish it on github) to manage subscriptions. I know about stripe and recurring billing providers, but that's not what this ...
1
vote
1answer
778 views

Books that every software system architect/data modeller must read

I hope I'm not confusing the term system architecture with the data model/database. Is there a book out there that's the standard for describing best practices, design methodologies, and other ...
0
votes
3answers
159 views

Should lookup tables enumerating strings have an integer primary key?

When I learned relational databases, the prof said that one would "almost always" want an artificial int as the primary key in a table, but did not specify what the exceptions are. At some time I ...
0
votes
2answers
143 views

Create a database for database tables

I'm working on a project where I have to give users the ability to build their own tables, each user can create more than one table. (the type of all data is string). The user can create a table and ...
0
votes
1answer
412 views

Design Pattern for Complex Data Modeling

I'm developing a program that has a SQL database as a backing store. As a very broad description, the program itself allows a user to generate records in any number of user-defined tables and make ...