C. J. Date is the world’s best known relational advocate. This one-week seminar consists of two parts: 3 days of SQL and Relational Design Theory, and 2 days of Database Design Theory. This seminar will benefit professionals using Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and DB2 systems alike.

SQL and Relational Theory: How to Write Accurate SQL Code

In this seminar, Chris Date shows you how to write SQL code that’s logically correct; how to avoid various SQL traps and pitfalls; and, more generally, how to use SQL as if it were a true relational language. From the detailed course description:

SQL is ubiquitous. But SQL is complicated, difficult, and error prone (much more so than SQL advocates would have you believe), and testing can never be exhaustive. So to have any hope of writing correct SQL, you must follow some discipline. What discipline? Answer: The discipline of using SQL relationally. But what does this mean? Isn’t SQL relational anyway?

Well, of course SQL is the standard language for use with relational databases—but that doesn’t make it relational! The sad truth is, SQL departs from relational theory in all too many ways; duplicate rows and nulls provide two obvious examples, but they’re not the only ones. Thus, systems based on SQL give you rope to hang yourself, as it were. So if you don’t want to hang yourself, you need to understand relational theory (what it is and why); you need to know about SQL’s departures from that theory; and you need to know how to avoid the problems they can cause. In a word, you need to use SQL relationally. Then you can behave as if SQL truly were relational, and you can enjoy the benefits of working with what is, in effect, a truly relational system.

Of course, a seminar like this wouldn’t be needed if everyone already used SQL relationally—but they don’t. On the contrary, there’s a huge amount of bad practice to be observed in current SQL usage. Such practice is even recommended in textbooks and other publications, by writers who really ought to know better; in fact, a review of the literature in this regard is a pretty dispiriting exercise. The relational model first saw the light of day in 1969—yet here we are, over 40 years later, and it still doesn’t seem to be very well understood by the database community at large. Partly for such reasons, this seminar uses the relational model itself as an organizing principle; it discusses various features of the model in depth, and shows in every case how best to use SQL to implement the feature in question. Note: Classroom exercises are an integral part of the seminar, and attendee discussion and interaction are encouraged.

Database Design Theory: a Database Professional’s Guide

Chris Date’s innovative approach to teaching database design theory will help you create robust, flexible, and accurate real-world databases. From the detailed course description:

Design theory is the scientific foundation for database design, just as the relational model is the scientific foundation for database technology in general. And just as anyone professionally involved in database technology in general needs to be familiar with the relational model, so anyone involved in database design in particular needs to be familiar with design theory.

But design theory has its problems ...and one of those problems, from the practitioner's point of view at any rate, is that it’s riddled with terms and concepts that are difficult to understand and don’t seem to have much to do with design as actually done in practice. Now, nobody could claim designing databases is easy; but a sound knowledge of the theory can only help. In fact, if you want to do design properly—if you want to build databases that are robust and flexible and accurate—then you really have to come to grips with that theory. There’s just no alternative: at least, not if you want to claim to be a design professional. Proper design is so important! After all, the database lies at the heart of much of what we do in the computing world; so if the database is badly designed, the negative impacts can be extraordinarily widespread.

Who Should Attend

This seminar is targeted to the following audiences:

• Database application designers and implementers
• Information modelers and database designers
• Data and database administrators
• Computer science professors specializing in database matters
• DBMS designers, implementers, and other vendor personnel
• Database consultants
• People responsible for DBMS product evaluation and acquisition

The seminar is not meant for beginners. Attendees will be expected to have at least an elementary familiarity with database concepts in general and the SQL language in particular. Attendees will also be expected to attempt a number of pencil and paper exercises in class. Solutions to those exercises will be discussed in class as well.

Don’t miss this opportunity to spend a week with the legendary C. J. Date.