Visual database modeling
The main purpose of my talk is to eliminate the fear of database design as a process. To convince people that modeling is an exciting mind game, where you may create and change prototypes over and over again, visualize and analyze them, climb into the jungle and then suddenly get out of it with a perfect working model built for ages.
PostgreSQL is the relational DBMS, which means tables are connected with each other. Thus we may think of a database as a graph, where nodes are tables and edges are relations (foreign keys).
That's why ER-diagrams are used a lot in database design. Even if one never used special soft, I'm sure everyone draws such representation in his mind or on paper.
In my talk, I will
- describe abstract levels of ER-models: conceptual, logical, physical;
- tell about notations used in ER-diagrams;
- provide the list of ER diagramming tools with Postgres support;
- show the common workflow for new database;
- explain what reverse engineering and forward engineering is;
- show common use cases, e.g. design from scratch, working with a legacy database, creating 1:1 and M:N relations.
The main purpose of my talk is to eliminate the fear of database design as a process. To convince people that modeling is an exciting mind game, where you may create and change prototypes over and over again, visualize and analyze them, climb into the jungle and then suddenly get out of it with a perfect working model built for ages.
