On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 9:41 AM, mjbalcer <marc@...> wrote:
> Every so often it's good to be reminded of the fundamentals. Too
> often, as you say, people seem to think that meaning can only be found
> in procedural code. There's a ton of meaning just in the way we
> organize the information in a problem.
>
> Some of you working in the real-time area might think that those who
> build systems using relational databases might be doing the kinds of
> thinking Leon presents here. Sadly, the more that databases just
> become a back-end to Java (and other languages') code, the less such
> thinking actually takes place. Not only that, but the very mechanisms
> that a relational database provides (such as constraint checking)
> don't get used--and instead developers go about re-building these
> mechanisms themselves.
>
> Nicely done!
>

I second Marc's praise. Leon's article is an excellent presentation on
the importance of Data Modeling.

Throughout my career I've consistently seen that projects have some
designers who just "get" the value of Data Modeling as opposed to
those who need everything dealt with in application specific procedural
logic. The first group can quickly discuss a question like whether the
relationship is 1 to 1 or 1 to 0..1, while the latter ends up dealing with
the procedures to deal with "corner cases" that they perceive as being
unique to the application.