Re: Designing a structure for a personal database

On Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:33:58 +0000, David Segall wrote:

> Thank you for the hint. Your hint indicates that you don't need a
> crystal ball to understand my requirements and that you may have some
> useful advice. Why are you so reluctant to give it to me?
>
Because he gave you the best possible advice already. To amplify what Ed
said:

Only you know how you need to relate addresses, phone numbers, etc, etc to
persons and businesses and whether to model relation****ps between people
and businesses. If you don't know this already, analyse the data you own
until you do understand it.

Then use that analysis to derive an entity-relation****p diagram. Add
attributes to the entities. Decide which are keys. Eliminate derived
attributes. Normalise the result to 3rd normal form. Then and only
then, design and code your schema, adding in the indexes needed to sup****t
prime keys and foreign key relation****ps.

For your reading pleasure: I don't know who the currently fa****onable
database design gurus are, but finding and reading stuff by Chris Date,
especially "An Introduction to Database Systems" volume 1, would be a good
start.


-- 
martin@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | 
org       | Zappa fan & glider pilot