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Logic and Databases: The Roots of Relational Theory

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It was with great excitement that I anticipated delivery of this book by Chris Date on Logic and Databases. The book's title boldly describes logic and databases as the roots of relational theory. Having been involved professionally with logical data modeling and relational database design since 1984, I was really thrilled to read a book that purportedly addressed a notion that I have held personally for, lo, these past twenty-five years: that the relational data model is well founded on logic, which is the science of correct reasoning. With this as a background, I must confess how terribly disappointed I was with this book.

Probably the main problem with Date's effort is that it is fettered by his obvious lack of training in the discipline of formal logic. One notes this even in the loose and common language Date employs when describing complicated subjects. The work is also truly overwhelmed by a sad reliance on the sophistry of symbolic logic, which is sort of like "grape nuts" or "christian science" in that it is not really one, nor the other. More importantly, Date makes the greatest and most important of admissions on Page 192 of this book. There, he relates that it has been many years since he's done any serious real world database design work. To those, like me, who had suffered through the rambling text to that point, the response to this admission was one word: "obviously"!

Date's two chapters on normalization and why "denormalization" ought to be resisted are at least decent. The rest of the book is hardly worth the effort.