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Michael J. Hernandez

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Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design First Edition

by Michael J. Hernandez (Author)

3.2 51 ratings

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Database Design for Mere Mortals: 25th Anniversary Edition
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Sound design can save you hours of development time before you write a single line of code. Based on the author's years of experience teaching this material, Database Design for Mere Mortals is a straightforward, platform-independent tutorial on the basic principles of relational database design. Database design expert Michael J. Hernandez introduces the core concepts of design theory and method without the technical jargon. With it's hands-on approach and a wealth of practical examples, Database Design for Mere Mortals will provide any developer with a common-sense design methodology for developing databases that work.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Relational databases are powerful tools for organizing data, but learning to use them effectively can be painful. Relational Database Design for Mere Mortals explains the concepts of relational-database design in an easy-to-digest fashion that covers both the theoretical underpinnings and their practical implications. Hernandez covers all the basics--table and field structure, keys, relationships, business rules, and more--but always keeps his feet on the ground with advice for real-world implementations and a particularly strong section on analyzing your current database infrastructure.

From Library Journal

This truly excellent introduction to relational database design will work for both novices and advanced designers because the book does not tie itself to any particular database implementation. Hernandez has years of database design and training experience. For all levels from public to university libraries.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley (C); First Edition (December 19, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 440 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0201694719
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0201694710
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 1 x 7.5 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,383,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #58 in Relational Databases
- #1,074 in Database Storage & Design
- #38,033 in Mathematics (Books)

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3.2 51 ratings

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Michael J. Hernandez

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3.2 out of 5

51 global ratings

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Tulsaboyw

Ok but as one of several in your library

Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2010

Verified Purchase

GOod book for a intro course on Db.

But insufficent for both intro and experienced..

However, my only real grip, is that the cd incuded is documentation...but no actual value.

In my last course using this book (Btw I am a 20 yr vet on databases, but relearning new ways of db using rails/etc..

But the bummer is the diagramming and etc the author uses have yet to be found.
Im using the same stencils and etc that Ive used for years .. and having to creat the same stuff the book has.

Yes he has it, but in pdf form... which is virutally useless, because most will have to spend a unusual amt of time recreating what the book should have already had.

No biggie, I use VISIO and other modeling tools heavily, but will either have to create a legend to say this is crows foot stuff or create the actully stuff direclty.

Its ok enough book to keep, but would not have been my main choice to teach from.

3 people found this helpful

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Mark McDonough

Ignore the Soreheads -- A Great Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 1998

Verified Purchase

No, this is not the book for you if you have extensive experience in software design and have already absorbed the basic concepts of database design by osmosis.
This is a book for "mere mortals," just like it says. I'm a reasonably smart, reasonably well-educated person who had some computer experience, but didn't even really know what a relational database was. Through circumstances too odd to mention, I was given primary responsibility for designing a commercial web application.
I read this book cover to cover, and designed the database that became the core of the product. The product actually works, and seems to be selling. Later in the development cycle, I worked with a brilliant MIT-trained software engineer, and he found my basic db design just ducky.
I definitely owe Mr. Hernandez a beer. Figured writing this review was a reasonable substitute.

15 people found this helpful

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For beginners - darn good start.

Reviewed in the United States on February 9, 2000

Verified Purchase

Ok - so I agree with most everyone else - for my exposure to databases it was a ways below my level. But for a beginner it is a great book... lighthearted and easy to read and understand.
Do you want to buy this book - answer this... do you know the PROPER way to create a many to many relationship in a database? If you do - then you dont need this book.

23 people found this helpful

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L. Blackmore

Decent, but tiresome execution

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2000

Verified Purchase

There is a lot of interesting info in this book, and MJH's approach to RDBMS is very user-friendly. For the beginner, this is an excellent guide. For anyone who wants to move beyond basics, it comes up short after a while, and gets bogged down with unnecessary details of the "how-to" of conducting a design interview.
While I appreciate the importance of thorough preparation of a new database, MJH not only wants us to dot our i's and cross our t's he takes it to an extreme that is just not realistic (or, IMHO, necessary) for your average system. Cranking our spec sheets for every single column in every single table with check boxes for character types etc. is overkill.

8 people found this helpful

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Moses Nettles Jr.

Meh

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2018

Meh

Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2001

After using this book to teach a database course, most of my students seem to agree with the following:
This book does not deal with database design; for the most part, it deals with definitions and small details. For example, the author focuses on little things like what to name your tables and fields.
This book contains very little in the way of actual database design concepts. It uses so many pages to explain things which have nothing to do with actual database design. The information relating to design is very detail oriented with no conceptual framework to tie it all together. This leaves students with no idea of how the little pieces fit into the big picture.
Try designing a database on your own after reading this book and see how far you actually get. When (or even if) you complete this task, take the finished product to someone who truly knows database design and ask for comments and criticism. I think that you'll be surprised at how little you've actually learned from this book.
For this upcoming semester, I plan on using Inside Relational Databases (ISBN 1852334010). I hope that it will be a better book.
Updates:
1) I didn't get a chance to teach this class again.
2) The students complained about this book and its companion book (SQL Queries for Mere Mortals)...

11 people found this helpful

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PDX Bill

Excellent introductory DB design book.

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2001

Verified Purchase

This is a book based on concepts rather than details. It discusses structure, normalization, keys etc. in general rather than specific programming help. Mind you this is just what the author wanted to accomplish. I found this book a good starting point and by itself was very helpful for the 70-100 MCSD exam.

3 people found this helpful

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Mike in the Arizona desert

Beginners Only, Could Be Shorter

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2006

This book is okay if you are a complete beginner or if you are interested in a consultant-like modeling methodology. If you have even a passing familiarity with things like field domains or records you may find this book too basic. It could have been about half the length. There is substantial repetition and a lot of ink given to hypothetical user interviews and documenting one's design. The author notes that the goal is to get generic concepts not the specific examples, but I would have liked more examples as illustrative of the applicability of the generic concepts. It's easy to say generically that a table should only include relevant fields--but more examples could help teach when and how and why to split up related things into separate tables. This book is very thin on that sort of example. The book is billed as a "software-independent approach" which it is. At the end, your design will exist on paper; you'll still need to learn an app like Access to create the physical database--and some things, like application-specific business rules get implemented at that stage. One more comment: it could be shorter, and it could use a glossary.

7 people found this helpful

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