Customer Reviews

Entity-Relationship Modeling: Foundations of Database Technology

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Dr Thalheim is a frequent contributor of technical papers and a frequent editor of conference papers. This helps explain the large number of database design issues addressed in this book. If you can get through the material, this book will definitely help you build better databases. The book actually serves as a survey of academic work on database design due to the amount of topics covered, though it isn't intended for that purpose.

The downside of the book is its lack of cohesion. The book does follow a typical sequence of presenting a "new" design methodology, defining the methodology, and finally applying designs using the methodology to physical designs. However, Thalheim frequently "stops" along the way to dive deeply into some technical detail. He often doesn't give the reader warning of this either. I found myself adding headings and outline numbers to the paragraphs so I could follow the train of thought of the chapter or section. Generally, these outline numbers would get down to six levels in some sections of a chapter but only one or two levels in the remaining text of the chapter.

This book is now one of two database design books I tend to re-read every six months or so. The other is Date's "An Introduction to Database Systems".