How to Avoid the Most Common Database Development Mistakes?

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Common Database Development Mistakes

Even if you are a pro in database development and administration and you know the in and out of these, it is still possible that mistakes may happen during database development. These may not always be grave errors, but the small ones may accumulate over time and ultimately cause the database to fail. 

As this is a possibility, even though you can take some chances during database development, you should not do any actions which may end up in a database crash. Losing data or not handling data accurately can hamper your business in many aspects. So you must handle it efficiently. Here in this article, we will discuss some of the most common Database Development Mistakes and the ways to avoid them.

Database development mistake #1

Poor naming conventions

Let us start with the simplest but obvious mistakes people make in database naming standards. Everyone knows that naming standards may cause different types of issues, but a wide majority do not adhere to any proper standards. Naming standards can be a matter of individual choice, but one should ensure that your naming decisions are more logical, consistent, and well documented.

Consistency in naming – For example, if you are working on the customer address field, you should not write it differently. Customer address cannot be represented with two different names as ‘Customer Address’ and ‘CustAdd.’ Choose any one standard form, stick to it, and document it so that future users also may follow the same.

Being logical – If you document your naming standards well, there may be a lot in terms of documentation. It is important to document, but it may not be an ideal choice that one may have to read through hundreds of documentation pages when they come across the need for naming database fields. So, be logical that one can easily understand the method of your naming convention logically. 

Database development mistake #2

Misuse of the primary key

Many database experts still do not seem to use the primary key properly. They forget a few facts as:

  1. You do not base a primary key value of the data in the given row.
  2. The value should not have any meaning, and due to this reason, the application data could not be used properly.
  3. Primary key values should not be changed ever.
  4. Primary key values are the values that are randomly or sequentially generated and managed by the system.

Your primary keys should have these properties to move data from one system to another easily, and you can also change the underlying data without interfering or complicating the relationships.

Database development mistake #3

Poor documentation

It may seem to be a no-brainer, but it is still an issue that needs to be well taken care of. All the naming standards, definitions of all the table columns, and relationships should be documented for easy understanding. This is being accessed by the current and future programmers, and it will make their tasks easier.

However, just having the documentation is not enough with basic definitions. You have to exactly spell out how do you expect the database structure to be designed and used. Even though documentation may take a bit of time and effort to finish, it is surely appreciated to have all your bases covered than letting your database collapse overtime.

Database development mistake #4

Improper normalization

Normalization is the process of defining the relationships between data sets and organizing your enterprise data into different tables. Simultaneously, some are taking extra care of doing normalization and never let any error in by overdoing it. Others do not handle it neatly and end up in trouble later.

Ensure that you do it neatly and do not overdo normalization. When it comes to the general rules related to normalization best practices, if your data falls among various rows, keep it in the same table if the change in one should not affect other rows. However, if the change in one row should affect the others, the data goes to another table.

Database development mistake #5

Not using any proper indexes

As in the case of normalization, also make sure that you are using appropriate indexes. You can vary the analysis to decide how many indexes are needed. You may also consider checking the server performance to understand how the locking indexes affect it. Alongside testing this, there are some general guidelines also you should follow.

Database development mistake #6

Hard deletes

It is a grave error if you delete something only to realize that you needed it later. Sometimes, it may be possible to retrieve, but you may have to spend save several hours of effort to do it. This is exactly why you have to avoid hard deletes.

With soft deletes, you are marking a file inactive, which can still be retrieved at a later time. However, you have to spend hours searching through the transaction log with hard deletes to identify something and restore it. Soft deletes can save your time.

Database development mistake #7

Using the exclusive arcs inappropriately

Exclusive arcs can add greater complexity to databases, which may also lead to developmental issues for stock. As a result of this, you should be only using the exclusive arcs in case of certain specific requirements, where the arc can only be used as:

  • If one relationship of the arc provides a primary shape and all other possible relations, shapes are executed.
  • If all the relationships in the arc have the same optionality.
  • If an arc is being used for only a single entity.
  • If a relationship is only left in one hour.

Suppose you push yourself to avoid any developmental errors, do better documentation, and follow naming standards. In that case, you can avoid most of the time-consuming mistakes and make your database last stronger and be reliable.

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