Note: In "Setting Matters Straight" I post on LinkedIn online Q&As that involve fundamentals under the header "What's Right and Wrong with this Database Picture" and then debunk them here. The purpose is to induce practitioners to test their foundation knowledge against our debunking, where we explain what is correct and what is fallacious. For in-depth treatments check out the POSTS and our PAPERS, LINKS and BOOKS (or organize one of our on-site/online SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs). Questions and comments are welcome here and on LinkedIn.

Q: “I'm not sure what this means: "The order of the rows and columns is immaterial to the DBMS?" -- could anyone explain?”

A: “It means two things:
The engine is under no obligation to insert new rows immediately following the previously inserted row(s)... During processing of selects, the optimizer is free to use any index it finds efficient to use or none at all... For this reason, if the order of returned data is important to your processing, then you must include an ORDER BY clause.”

Q: “How do you reorder fields in the database?”

A: “Depends on how you define "reorder". What view of your data are you trying to set the order. Are you in Table Design view? ... Are you looking at form? The answer is different depending on what you are referring to.”

--Quora.com

Note: To demonstrate the correctness and stability due to a sound theoretical foundation relative to the industry's fad-driven "cookbook" practices, I am re-publishing as "Oldies But Goodies" material from the old DBDebunk.com (2000-06), Judge for yourself how well my arguments hold up and whether the industry has progressed beyond the misconceptions those arguments were intended to dispel. I may revise, break into parts, and/or add comments and/or references. You can acquire foundation knowledge by checking out our POSTS, BOOKS, PAPERS, LINKS (or, even better, organize one of our on-site SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs).

The following is an email exchange with a reader and DBMS designer.

ON DATA TYPES AND WHAT A DBMS IS

(originally published in 2001)

Reader:
"I would like to hear your (or Date's) opinion on The Suneido Database … it seems to me self-contradictory. They aren't typed ... so how can they define operators, or even the idea of domains. They also say they include administrative commands, which as far as I understand isn't allowed in the THIRD MANIFESTO. While they do not claim to be an implementation of the Manifesto, their claims that their database language was created by CJ Date do not sound appropriate."

 "They don't know what [domains (distinct from programming data types)] are and what their function in the RDM is. That's common for all DBMS vendors, the claims of which should be always taken with more than a grain of salt."

Note: "Setting Matters Straight" is a new format: I post on LinkedIn an online Q&A involving data fundamentals that I subsequently debunk in a post here. This is to encourage readers to test their foundation knowledge against our debunking here, where we confirm what is correct and correct what is fallacious. For in-depth treatments check out the POSTS and our PAPERS, LINKS and BOOKS (or organize one of our on-site/online SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs). Questions and comments are welcome here and on LinkedIn.

Q: “How do I avoid too many relations in databases?”

A: “You don’t. Every relation is there to store meaningful data, hopefully you do not define database relations for data that are not to be stored in your database.”

A: “By following proper design principles. Normalization, standard data patterns, and progressing from logical to physical always. Never denormalize (or avoid normalizing in the first place) because performance never trumps accuracy. It really doesn't matter how fast you get the wrong answer.”

--Quora.com

Note: "Setting Matters Straight" is a new format: I post on LinkedIn an online Q&A involving data fundamentals that I subsequently debunk in a post here. This is to encourage readers to test their foundation knowledge against our debunking here, where we confirm what is correct and correct what is fallacious. For in-depth treatments check out the POSTS and our PAPERS, LINKS and BOOKS (or organize one of our on-site/online SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs). Questions and comments are welcome here and on LinkedIn.

Q: “To what extent is relational database theory related to set theory?”

A: “Relational database theory is indeed closely derived from set theory. Many operations in relational data are directly related to common operations one does with sets. In fact, SQL has keywords for them that should sound familiar to someone who has just taken a class in Discrete Mathematics:

• UNION
• INTERSECT
• DIFFERENCE (called MINUS in Oracle)

Even the structure of a table is set-oriented. A table is a set of rows, and a row is a set of columns, and those columns must match the set of columns defined in the table's header.”

--Quora.com

Note: "Setting Matters Straight" (SMS) is a new format: I post on LinkedIn an online Q&A involving data fundamentals that I subsequently debunk in a post here. This is to encourage readers to test their foundation knowledge against our debunking here, where we confirm what is correct and correct what is fallacious. For in-depth treatments check out the POSTS and our PAPERS, LINKS and BOOKS (or organize one of our on-site/online SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs). 

Q: “How do you return the most recent record in SQL?”

A: “There are many ways of doing it. I would suggest (first thing came to my mind):

Select Top 1
from YourTable
order by TablePrimaryKey Desc;”

A: “If you mean "the last inserted record which has no datetime stamp field" ... you have a few options.

• If you cannot use date/time -- your next best bet would be an auto-increment/sequence field, which assigns increasing numbers to each inserted record.
• If that’s not available, you would have to rely on business logic e.g. order # or some such.
  

Some vendors, like Oracle, provide ROWID pseudocolumn for each record which might help in some quick’n’dirty cases -- it is not guaranteed to be sequential but could be (e.g., when table has had no DELETE operations).”    --Quora.com

If you don't know, I set matters straight @dbdebunk.com.

Note: "Setting Matters Straight" is a new format: I post on LinkedIn an online Q&A involving data fundamentals to encourage readers to test their foundation knowledge, which they can then compare with our debunking here, where we confirm what is correct and correct what is fallacious (with clarifications, wherever necessary). For in-depth treatment check out the POSTS and our PAPERS, LINKS and BOOKS (or organize one of our on-site/online SEMINARS, which can be customized to specific needs).

Q: “What is the difference between a primary key, a unique key, and an index in databases?”

A: “Unique key is a field (or fields) with a set of unique values; the uniqueness is usually enforced with UNIQUE constraint. There might be one or more per table. Every PRIMARY key is always a unique key; there should be only one per table. It uniquely identifies record, and is used to enforce integrity - entity integrity, and, in tandem with FOREIGN key, referential integrity. Index is a data structure to facilitate records search. It might be created on PRIMARY key (best practice), unique key or any other field or combination thereof in the table. The limit on how many indices a table might have is defined in RDBMS implementation. An index might - or might not - speed up some queries.”

A: “The primary key is inherently indexed and unique and is the cross reference to related tables. Often the best primary key is an auto number integer as any value entered by humans is subject to error or delay that can be challenging to manage in the user interface ... whereas an auto number is assigned immediately upfront and eliminates any possible record conflict in tables during multi user entries. A unique key is somewhat of an informal definition. My view is that it is a definition of a field that is not being used as the primary key, but is unique unlike i.e. Last Name -- for instance a social security number field. So it is not the primary key as it is not the field/value being used to cross reference to related tables but it is unique in the table.”

A: “A primary key is a unique, non null value which can identify every tuple (row in the table) uniquely. A unique key/column/constraint ensures that no two rows contain the same value (almost the same as primary key). Unless specified explicitly for the column configuration, a NULL is a valid value for column with unique constraint. A index can be thought of as the appendix at the end of the book. The information is sorted in specific order so that look up is easy and it points to the location that is being searched for.”

--Quora.com