The week is here, time to head south for the largest free conference I go to each year. SQL Saturday, I mean Day of Data Jacksonville. (It is going to take a while to stop calling it SQL Saturday!) has 12 concurrent tracks, over 5 time slots, some great pre-cons and well, some legendary snacks

It also has legendary themes. This year, however, might actually be just a wee bit controversial. See the them is Star Wars versus Star Trek. And while I know what side I come down on. Last year I went over to Walt Disney World to Hollywood Studios and found myself in an amazing light saber event!

And when I spoke there in 2024, well, I may have made a post somewhere dressed like, well, this:

So yeah, really looking forward to this weekend, even if I am not taking my light saber this year, nor do we plan to go to Batuu again this year as we are doing something else that night. I mean still at Disney World of course, just in a different park.

Meanwhile, back on the topic of Day of Data Jacksonville …

My Session

This year’s session is my favorite one, one so classic that if it was a song, it would be sung by Bing Crosby. If it was a film, it would star Jimmy Stewart AND Cary Grant. But it is also a session that is about a topic that has recently been making a comeback.

Database design. Why a comeback? Because more and more people are realizing that AI is just as likely to be confused at your weird schema as that consulting firm you hired that keeps thinking that the table named “Customer” contains… you know… customers.

Silly people, this contains the users because… well who knows the reason, but most of the people who have worked with you know it was done 20 years ago by this employee who left and parlayed their great designs into another job… or something similar.

Relational Database Design Fundamentals

Data should be easy to work with in SQL Server if the database has been organized as close as possible to the standards of normalization that have been proven for many years, but are often thought of as old-fashioned. Many common SQL programming “difficulties” are the result of struggling against these standards and can be avoided by understanding the requirements, applying normalization, as well as a healthy dose of simple common sense.

In this session I will give an overview of how to design a relational database, allowing you to work with the data structures instead of against them. This will let you use SQL naturally, enabling the query engine internals to optimize your output needs without you needing to spend a lot of time thinking about it. This will mean less time trying to figure out why SUBSTRING(column,3,1) = ‘A’ is killing your performance, and more time for solving the next customer problem.

So join me in the room named Voyager for.. wait, Voyager? That is a Star Trek name. And not one with Kirk, Spock, and original cast headed out on a five year mission to boldly go…

Maybe that room assignment will change when I throw a fit (not really), but join me in Jacksonville for a slightly nerdy, but never boring session on fundamentals of database design on May the 2nd, and May the Force be with you.