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Grokking Relational Database Design
1. welcome
2. 1_Introduction_to_databases_and_SQL
3. 2_Related_tables_and_more_SQL
4. 3_Overview_of_database_design
5. 4_Entities_and_attributes
6. 5_Relationships
welcome
Dear reader:

Thanks for purchasing the MEAP of Grokking Relational Database Design.

Relational database design is relevant to a broad array of fields where data

management and information storage are critical, such as information
technology, software development, data science, and business intelligence. If
you study or work in such a field, and you seek personal growth or career
advancement, it is crucial for you to have a solid understanding of relational
database design. After all, relational databases continue to be the standard
approach for data storage in many industries. Understanding relational
database design can serve as a foundation for you to learn other related
concepts and systems, such as data warehousing, data mining, and NoSQL
databases.

We have been teaching database design and management for years, and we
understand the barrier to learning this topic deeply. We appreciate the
opportunity from Manning to write a book on relational database design, and
want to make this book intuitive, informative, and, most importantly,
appropriate for anyone who wants to learn a bit about this topic. As a result,
we write this book with no assumption of your prior knowledge in
programming or databases. If you have a high school education, you can read
this book and understand how to design relational databases from scratch.

We divided this book into three parts. In Part I, you will learn the essentials
of Structured Query Language (SQL) and its use to query and create tables
and databases; you will also get an overview of the process of database
design.

In Part II, you will learn the key steps in database design by designing a
database for an online market from scratch. Some of the key steps include
identification of entities and attributes, development of entity-relationship
diagrams, and database normalization.
In Part III, you will get a glimpse into using generative AI to facilitate
database design by designing a database for a spacecraft manufacturer. You
will evaluate the proposals and answers from ChatGPT given specific design
requirements, and explore how to use tools like ChatGPT effectively.

Your feedback is invaluable in improving this book, and we hope that you
will share your thoughts and comments in the liveBook Discussion forum.
We appreciate knowing where we can make improvements and increase your
understanding of the material.

—Dr. Qiang Hao and Dr. Michael Tsikerdekis

In this book

welcome 1 Introduction to databases and SQL 2 Related tables and more

SQL 3 Overview of database design 4 Entities and attributes 5 Relationships
1 Introduction to databases and
SQL
In this chapter
You get a foundation for the rest of the book.
You learn the basics of relational databases.
You peek into database design.
You write your first SQL query and learn more about the basics of SQL.

What you need to know

As you read this chapter, you will find some code snippets. If you want to
execute those code snippets or see what changes need to made to the code for
different RDMBS, you will need to check the GitHub repository that
accompanies this book (https://github.com/Neo-Hao/grokking-relational-
database-design). You can find the scripts for this chapter in the chapter_01
folder and follow the instructions in the README.md file to run the scripts.

1.1 Overview
Database design is a critical yet easily neglected step in software
development. Nearly every application requires data storage and management
to some extent, but not every application has a well-designed database. If you
design a database without knowing the principles of effective database
design, your application may suffer from a series of issues you weren’t
expecting, such as disorganized data or queries taking too long and too many
resources to run. Such issues can lead to bugs and a bad user experience.
In contrast, effective database design can serve as a solid foundation for
effective software development. Effective database design makes sure that
the data of an application is well organized and structured, which in turn
supports efficient data querying and manipulation that contributes to solid
applications and superior user experience. As such, regardless of where you
are in your journey of learning programming and software development, it is
essential to learn how to design databases effectively, and possibly also learn
how to talk to non-tech people without making their eyes glaze over with
boredom.

This book covers how to design databases, and assumes no prior knowledge
in databases or programming. By the end of this book, you will have a good
understanding of how to design relational databases from scratch. We aim to
help you achieve this goal via down-to-earth definitions and explanations,
rich examples, and active learning practice.

This chapters aims to introduce relational databases, define a set of terms that
you will see in the next few chapters, and cover the basics of Structured
Query Language (SQL). SQL (pronounced as Sequel) is the programming
language used to manage data in relational databases, and some
understanding of SQL is essential for you to have a robust understanding of
database design.
1.2 Relational databases
Once upon a time, a small company used spreadsheets to store all its
customer data. At first, everything seemed to be running smoothly, and the
company was able to access and update the data as needed. As time went on,
the company grew and acquired more customers, and the Excel spreadsheets
became increasingly difficult to manage. There were duplicates and
inconsistencies in the data, and the spreadsheets became so large and
unwieldy that they took a long time to load and update.

One day, the company received a call from a customer who had been charged
twice for a single purchase. When the company tried to access the customer's
data in the spreadsheet to investigate the issue, they found that the data had
been corrupted and was no longer accessible. As more and more customers
began to report similar issues, the company learned the hard way that
spreadsheets are a bad choice for storing customer data. The company
eventually invested in a relational database system that could handle the scale
of their data and ensure the integrity of their records.

If you have a very small amount of data with a simple structure to store, a
spreadsheet can get the job done and you don’t need a database at all.
However, as the data complexity and volume increase, you may find a
spreadsheet unwieldy. When you need to apply access control to the data,
maintain its consistency, integrity and scalability, as well as conduct routing
data analysis, you will absolutely need a database.

Relational databases have been and still are the default technology for
storing and accessing data when scale, data consistency, and data integrity are
all required. In this section, you will learn some fundamental concepts in
relational databases, such as tables, entities, and relational database
management systems.

1.2.1 Tables, entities, and primary keys

A relational database is a collection of tables that store data. A table is like a

spreadsheet, which you are likely familiar with. Just like a spreadsheet, the
data in a table is organized into rows and columns. A table can be used to
represent an entity or a relationship between entities, where each row
represents a single data record of an entity, and each column represents an
attribute of that entity.

What is an entity? An entity is an object or concept that can be described by

many attributes. For example, imagine that we are running an online store
called The Sci-Fi Collective which sells sci-fi products (e.g., a time machine
that only takes you back five minutes, just in case you forgot your keys).
Products sold by our online store are an entity, and they can be described by
at least four attributes, including name, description, price, and manufacturer.
When we map products to a table in the database supporting the online store
of The Sci-Fi Collective, the four attributes will be mapped to four individual
columns, and each product will be represented as a row in this table.

In addition to the four columns, you may notice that we added another
column product_id in the above table. All values in the product_id column
are unique, and can be used to identify an individual row. We call the
product_id the primary key of the product table. Interesting fact about
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primary keys per table: much like in the popular Highlander series, there can
be only one. You can find a much deeper discussion on primary keys later in
Chapter 3.

It is not uncommon that one spreadsheet is used to store the information of

multiple entities. You may be asking: Can we do the same with tables in a
relational database? For example, if we decide to store the information of
customers and the products in one table for The Sci-Fi Collective, the table
will look like the following:

This is a typical poorly designed table. Beyond the data redundancy that you
can easily spot, such a design can cause many unexpected problems. For
example, if a customer’s information only appears in one row, when we want
to delete a product, we will have to delete the customer in the same row from
our database. This issue is known as delete anomaly. For another example,
from time to time, we need to insert a product into this table that has not been
bought by any customers. However, the table requires valid customer
information to be provided whenever a new row is added. The contradicting
requirements will leave us in awkward situation in which we can’t add any
new products at all. This issue is known as insert anomaly.

As you can see, bad database design can lead to issues that negatively impact
software quality. To avoid such issues, it is necessary to master the basic
principles and best practice of database design.

1.2.2 Relational database management systems and Structured

Query Language
Relational databases and tables rely on the help from relational database
management systems (RDBMS) to physically store and manage the data.
Edgar Codd at IBM developed the first RDBMS in the 1970s.

What is an RDBMS? An RDBMS is software that interacts with the

underlying hardware and operating system to physically store and manage
data in relational databases. Additionally, an RDBMS provides tools to
create, modify and query databases along with other important functionalities
(e.g., security controls). You might be familiar with some of the commonly
used RDBMS such as SQLite, MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. When
you need to deploy a database that you designed, you will need to interact
with one of the available RDBMS on the market.

One of the most notable tools supported by nearly all RDBMS is SQL. SQL
is a programming language that you can use to create, modify, and query data
stored in tables in an RDBMS. Although different RDBMS vendors may
implement their own variations and extensions, SQL has been standardized
over the years. As such, the consistency of SQL among different RDBMS is
high, and the variations don’t matter that much in the context of this book.

Of course, this being primarily a database design book, SQL may seem less
important. Database design doesn’t necessarily require you to use SQL. Some
RDBMS come with graphical tools that can generate SQL scripts that
automatically create databases and tables based on your design. However,
some understanding of SQL can make it easier for you to learn database
design, especially when it comes to structural or design issues such as data
integrity, optimization, and scalability. After all, SQL is a standardized
language used by most RDBMS. Knowing SQL will allow you to rely less on
graphical tools and work with different types of RDBMS. As a result, we will
cover the basics of SQL in this chapter and Chapter 2.

1.3 Your first SQL query

You will learn SQL by executing your first SQL query in this section. We
will use the same example that you saw in the last section, the database of
The Sci-Fi Collective (because who doesn’t like Sci-Fi stuff?). The database
contains many tables, but the product table is all you need to focus on for
now. The product table looks like the following:

You will first load a prepared SQL script to generate a database and this
table. We have prepared SQL scripts that generate the above table with data
in different RDBMS, which you can find in our GitHub repository
(https://github.com/Neo-Hao/grokking-relational-database-design). You can
follow the instructions of the README.md file in the chapter_01 folder to
execute the prepared script in your preferred RDBMS or tool.

For example, the easiest approach is to use SQLite Online:

1. Clone or download our GitHub repository (https://github.com/Neo-

Hao/grokking-relational-database-design).
2. Navigate to SQLite Online (https://sqliteonline.com).
3. Click Import and load the script named sqlite_online.sql from the
downloaded or cloned GitHub repository.
4. Click Okay.

After that, you will be ready to query the product table. You can type the
following query (as a whole) into the code editor on SQLite Online and then
click Run:
SELECT name

FROM product
WHERE price > 20;

So, what does this query do? The “price > 20” may be a dead giveaway.
The query retrieves the names of products whose prices are higher than 20.
We know that there are 10 rows representing 10 products in the product
table, and 5 products (e.g., Atomic Nose Hair Trimmer) sell at a price below
20, so the names of the other 5 products are returned. Your results should
look like this:
You may notice that this SQL query shares a lot of similarity with plain
English. That is because SQL is special. You see, most programming
languages are imperative. Coding with an imperative language, such as Java
or Python, requires you to specify both what to do and how to do it.
However, SQL is declarative, which means that you only need to specify
what to do. As far as the steps require to carry out the task, that’s for SQL to
figure out. Specifying what you want instead of how to get it done is more
natural to human beings, and that’s why SQL resembles the English
language.

SQL is like English with a lot less small talk. However, you don’t have all the
same freedom in word choices when it comes to putting together a SQL
query. You must use a set of SQL clauses (also known as statements) and
follow some rules. In your first query, you used the following three clauses:

SELECT: The SELECT clause allows you to specify the columns you want
to retrieve from a table. In your first query, you only asked for the name
column; thus, the SELECT statement was SELECT name
FROM: The FROM clause is used to specify the source you want to retrieve
data from, such as one or more tables. In your first query, you only
asked for data from the product table; thus, the FROM clause was FROM
product
WHERE: The WHERE clause allows you to specify conditions with which to
filter the data retrieved by the SELECT clause. In your first query, you
only want the names of those products whose prices are higher than 20;
thus, the query was SELECT name FROM product WHERE price > 20;

When you finish a SQL query, you should use a semicolon (;) to indicate its
end. The semicolon tells the RDBMS that this is the end of a SQL query, and
anything coming after that is a new query.

1.4 The basics of SQL queries

Our preferred approach for learning SQL is to grasp the most important
clauses, and learn the rest only when necessary. Although there are many
SQL clauses, they are not equally important. The most important ones can
help you build a solid foundation, as well as construct a map in your mind
that can guide your future learning.

Therefore, instead of trying to cover every SQL clause, we will cover only
the ones that are essential or critical to your future learning. In this chapter,
you will learn important clauses that can be used to query a single table.

1.4.1 Filtering

Filtering is a common data retrieval task. Whenever you need only a subset
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