User's Guide
PART 2. Relational Database Concepts
CHAPTER 13. Designing Your Database
While designing a database is not a difficult task for small and medium sized databases, it is an important one. Bad database design can lead to an inefficient and possibly unreliable database system. Because client applications are built to work on specific parts of a database, and rely on the database design, a bad design can be difficult to revise at a later date.
This chapter covers database design in an elementary manner. For more advanced information, you may wish to the DataArchitect documentation. DataArchitect is a component of Powersoft PowerDesigner, a database design tool available from Sybase, Inc.
You may also wish to consult an introductory book such as A Database Primer by C. J. Date. If you are interested in pursuing database theory, C. J. Date's An Introduction to Database Systems is an excellent textbook on the subject.
The addition of Java classes to the available data types extends the relational database concepts on which this chapter is based. Database design involving Java classes is not discussed in this chapter.
For information on designing databases that take advantage of Java class data types, see Java database design.