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Fabian Pascal, THE DBDEBUNK GUIDE TO MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT DATA FUNDAMENTALS - A DESK REFERENCE FOR THE THINKING DATA PROFESSIONAL AND USER (October 2016)

(Description and Excerpts from Preface and David McGoveran's Foreword)

Reviews:

• Craig Mullins 
• Todd Everett
• Toon Koppelaars
• Davide Mauri 

This guide consists of 50 sections 1-3 pages long, each based on a carefully selected dbdebunk.com Q&A. Each documents and debunks one or more major common and entrenched myths/misconceptions/fallacies about data and relational fundamentals and discusses the practical implications thereof.

Instead of a Table of Content, there is an index of misconception categories:

• Data independence (logical, integrity, physical)
• Data integrity (business rules, integrity constraints, database consistency)
• Data models (relational, hierarchic, network)
• Relational data sub-language (vs. computationally complete language)
• Database and application-specific functions
• Domains (simple, non-simple, data types)
• Entity supertype-subtypes (and inapplicable data)
• Keys (natural, primary, surrogate)
• Levels of representation (conceptual, logical, physical)
• Missing data (NULL, many-valued logics)
• Normalization, further normalization, denormalization, normal forms
• Relational Data Model
• Relations (base, derived) vs. R-tables
• SQL and relational fidelity
• Types of model (conceptual, logical, physical, data)
• "Unstructured data"

which references, for each category, all the sections in which the misconceptions in that category is discussed, possibly in different contexts, or with different emphasis. Each section has a short list of directly relevant further readings, often including my PRACTICAL DATABASE FOUNDATIONS paper series (available via the PAPERS page).

Price: $40.00

Revisions and new editions:

• Same year revisions and new versions are free.
• Later revisions are free.
• Later new editions are half price.

How to order:

Preferred: Check or money order (contact me via email for mailing address.

PayPal: Email me for instructions

 

 

Recommended Books

• Pascal, F., PRACTICAL ISSUES IN DATABASE MANAGEMENT
• Olson, R., MEANING AND ARGUMENT
• Nijssen, S., CONCEPTUAL SCHEMA AND RELATIONAL DATABASE DESIGN 
• Kent, W., DATA AND REALITY 
• Stoll, R. R., SET THEORY AND LOGIC
• Hodges, W., LOGIC 
• Pospesel, H., PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC 
• Pospesel, H., PREDICATE LOGIC 
• DeHaan, L., and Koppelaars, T., APPLIED MATHEMATICS FOR DATABASE PROFESSIONALS
• Smith, P., INTRODUCTION TO FORMAL LOGIC

Your support is appreciated.

Fabian Pascal
Founder, Publisher, Editor and Debunker-in-Chief