Chapter 2: Designing a Logical Database

Databases are central to information systems, and a structure called a data model—also known as a schema—specifies a database. Changes in this structure can have a radical and expensive impact on the programs that use it. Therefore, it is important to think through your database design thoroughly in advance and develop a design that will satisfy business needs, perform adequately, behave predictably, and enable extensibility and data reusability.

In this chapter, you will learn how to design a normalized database to support online transactional processing (OLTP) applications and how to denormalize the design to support business intelligence (BI) applications. You will also see how to plan the data flow, how to use advanced table features such as supertype and subtype tables, and how to model hierarchies.

Exam objectives in this chapter:

  • Design a logical database.
    • Design a normalized database.
    • Optimize the database design by denormalizing.
    • Design data flow architecture.
  • Design objects that define data.
    • Design tables that use advanced features.

     Next >

 

 

© Microsoft. All Rights Reserved.