Evolutionary Database Design

Martin Fowler, Pramod Sadalage

Number of words	4345
Computer science content	medium
Math content	none
Business content	none
English language complexity	medium

Sub-areas covered

database design
agile methodologies

Learning objectives

to understand the differences between up-front and agile methodologies
to see why team communication is so important while working on a project
to understand what is meant by refactoring

Keywords

database

software designed for holding large amounts of data

database schema

a description of the tables and views in a database together with the relationships between them

Summary

Martin Fowler is a widely acknowledged expert in the areas of software design, methodologies and design patterns. In this article he introduces an alternative (to waterfall methodology) method of developing databases and programs. The main idea is to regard database design as an evolutionary process.

Tekst, choć dość długi, ciekawie przedstawia podejście do projektowania baz danych w sposób podobny do zwinnego programowania. Artykuł wprowadza w tematykę tej nowej metodologii, jako alternatywy dla tzw. metodologii “waterfall”. Dostajemy wiele informacji na temat tego jak traktować projektowanie baz danych w sposób jakby to był duży ewoluujący obiekt.

Pre-reading questions

Have you heard about Agile Methodologies? What are they used for?
What does DBA stand for?
What are DBA’s functions?