Louis Davidson
Database design writer, speaker, and doer.
Cleveland, Tennessee, United States
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Louis, also known as drsql (despite the lack of any post-graduate education) is a database design fanatic and has been for over 25 years when he started writing his first book on the topic. He has been a blogger, writer, editor, speaker, and champion of the idea that if you start any project with a firm foundation, it will serve you well for years and years. You can find out more on his website at drsql.link.
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Sharing is Caring and Writing is Sharing
Of all the professional development advice that floats around on the Internet, one piece of advice has always stood out to me the most. Write. Start your own blog, write an article in a magazine, maybe even write a book. It is definitely great advice, but what does it really mean?
In this session, I will share with you my experience as a writer of many blogs and books. In the past 25 years of staring at a keyboard looking for the next word, I have encountered so many different types of writers and editors. Lots of great stuff that has been written, and the not-so-great.
I will cover how putting yourself out there in the written word is a great thing to do, but I will also share some of the negatives. Whether you have considered writing about technology or not, this session will hopefully give you a feel for the pros and cons of the process.
Dimensional and Relational Design Differences
In relational database design, the main objective is to mirror the database structure as outlined in the requirements to ensure data integrity. While this approach may sometimes be challenging for users of the database, the difficulty should primarily indicate the complexity of business needs rather than flaws in the design.
Conversely, whereas BI designs must also adhere to the requirements, usability is also especially important in your designs. Small design errors can result in analytic mistakes that have huge business implications, even when the data is technically correct. In this lightning talk, I will highlight a significant mistake I made in my initial large star schema project that haunted me for years.
Relational Database Design Fundamentals
Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have been proven for many years, but are often thought of as old-fashioned. Many common SQL programming "difficulties" are the result of struggling against these standards and can be avoided by understanding the requirements, applying normalization, as well as a healthy dose of simple common sense. In this session I will give an overview of how to design a relational database, allowing you to work with the data structures instead of against them. This will let you use SQL naturally, enabling the query engine internals to optimize your output needs without you needing to spend a lot of time thinking about it. This will mean less time trying to figure out why SUBSTRING(column,3,1) = 'A' is killing your performance, and more time for solving the next customer problem.
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