"Roderick A. Anderson" wrote:
>
> If you were going to teach a class on relational database design which
> book(s) would you use? Heck if you were going to take a class which book
> do you think should be used.
>
The best book I've found so far is David C. Hay's Data Model Patterns
it does a very good job documenting common models. It's best to
learn from example... and this one provides lots of examples.
Another one which isn't so bad, is Peter Coad's book on object-oriented
programming. His book is heavy on example models, which lend themselves
to implementation in an object-relational database like postgresql.
There was one other 'data model pattern' book out there, I picked
it up at Borders one day... read some of it, looked at my wallet
and put the book back *sigh*. I should have written down the
author/title, it was very much like David Hay's book, but from
someone with a different perspective, so it was interesting reading.
Any data model should be backed by solid requirements and analysis
discussion, if it was a year long class, I'd mix the two together.
College students get taught alot of design, but not many professors
go out of there way to teach analysis. You could get some of the
UML books to help you, however, I'm still partial to old-school
analysis and design, 'Structured Analysis and Systems Specification'
by Tom DeMarco. It is dated 1979, but it is still a wonderful book.
Michael Jackson's recent book is also very good, it teaches predicate
logic, which, IMHO, is sadly lacking from UML. Oh, ya, you could
also grab some of the UML books. The new one written by Jachobson
is very good -- use cases are absolutely necessary when data modeling.
Of course, 'A Guide to THE SQL STANDARD' by C.J.Date with Hugh Darwen
is always handy to have around.
Hope this helps,
Clark Evans