MySQL and Database Design

Database design was one of the few technical classes offered in my LIS program so this weeks lesson was like visiting with an old friend.  Ok, more like an old friend of a friend that you never really knew that well to start with.

Database design is hard.  Understanding normalization is even harder.  I spent most of my time referring to my notes and my old text book Concepts of Database Management.  (My notes were crammed into and on most of the book.)  It’s a very comprehensive text on database design.  Heavy on theory and light on technical know-how.  The class lasted one full semester and we didn’t actually touch a database until there were just three weeks left.  It was the hardest class I took in my 1.5 years in library school and it was the most amount of work I can remember putting into a class outside of a few art studios in undergrad.

All of that said, I’m not even sure if my tables were normalized correctly or not.  Normalization is a very foreign and difficult to grasp concept when you’re taking a database class.  Quite frankly I don’t know how other people in this class can deal with it or even begin to comprehend the necessary elements in a one week period.  I think it’s a too much to chew in a very short period.