Data Modeling for Fun and Profit: Are you ready to take the Database Design Challenge?
Are you up to publicly testing your database design chops?
Want to improve your street cred?
If so, then read on…
Relational databases form the backbone of thousands, if not millions, of applications and systems around the globe. A key part of building these applications is designing and implementing the data structures they use.
(Well a few of us “old school” guys still think so no matter what the anyone else thinks!)
Proper table design can mean the difference between a scalable, high performing database that is a joy to query and an unfathomable, unsupportable mess that makes your brain melt.
Given the importance of these databases, understanding good data modelling techniques and physical implementation methods are essential skills for data and system architects, database administrators and developers creating database applications.
Building on the hugely successful SQL and PL/SQL quizzes already available at the PL/SQL Challenge, the new weekly Database Design Quiz kicks off on Saturday, October 5, 2013 to help you build these skills. The quiz will cover many areas of database modeling and design, from logical design all the way to physical database design, including topics such as:
- Normalization – ensuring you have high quality data
- Referential integrity – saving you the time and effort of writing your own application-based constraints
- Indexing – enabling you to write fast and efficient queries
Whether you’re an experienced data modeler or completely new to relational databases, the weekly Database Design Quiz offers you the opportunity to both learn new approaches and show off your expertise. It will teach techniques that you can use to improve the quality for your work and impress future employers with your achievements.
This weekly quiz is managed by Chris Saxon, who has been playing the PL/SQL Challenge since August 2010 and placed second in the most recent PL/SQL Championship. More to the point of this quiz, however, he is also a database technologist with 10 years experience designing and building Oracle database applications. He currently works as the Data Architect for the airline Flybe, a role which sees him creating the data structures for the flybe.com database and the company’s enterprise data warehouse. He also runs the blog www.sqlfail.com, a project to explain database concepts and other topics of interest using just SQL and PL/SQL.
Registering is quick, easy and free. If you’re not already a member of the PL/SQL Challenge, then head to www.plsqlchallenge.com and sign up for a free account.
Let the Database Design competition commence!
Show me what ya got!
Kent
P.S. I have been helping Chris a little by reviewing the questions and I can tell you this quiz will be a real challenge even for those of you with years of experience. So get on over and sign up today (there will be prizes): www.plsqlchallenge.com
The Data Warrior 