The majority of websites around today tap into a database of some sort – be it made with SQL or a flat file (shudder now) – so a programmer maintaining it can use all the help they can get to speed up the process. So, what if you could take all the regular and mundane calls to the database and automate them? Wouldn’t that make everyone’s life a lot easier? Most everyone who works with databases has heard of Triggers – the nice automation of a query when a change is made. Not many use them though. I certainly didn’t and I have been working with databases for years. I [...]
database, programming, sql
This week in the MIST 7510 Database Design class, we hit on a topic that I have both found very interesting and very frustrating at the same time – recursive relationships. Essentially, this is just a loop like in programming which ties an existing 1:1, 1:m, or m:m relationship to itself. The concept is fairly easy to grasp when seen, but a bit more challenging to implement. I really enjoyed the different examples Dr. Watson used to show the relationships in practice. It was funny seeing topics like marriage, Noah’s Ark, and the British Monarchy being mapped into a database design. Mapping such a data model requires some serious abstract [...]
