Monday 11 a.m.–11:45 a.m.
Dubious Database Design
Andrew Godwin
Audience level:
- Intermediate
Description
There are plenty of resources to learn how to build a database well, but where's the fun in that? Learn some of the worst decisions you can make when structuring your data store, see some hideous examples from the real world, and come away with a better knowledge of what you can avoid.
Abstract
Everyone has seen plenty of articles about how to design data storage solutions well - but nobody is getting up there and talking about how bad their storage design is.
Rather than just listen to more things to do and vague reasons why, come and see some truly awful examples of storage design, and the lessons we can learn from it. What happens when you end up reimplementing indexes? Why shouldn't you turn off durability? Why not make a table for every user? And how can you render templates purely in the database?
All this, and more, as we delve into the realm of datastores and examples both historic and current that you can learn from, and hopefully come away with a better idea why the rest of us design things the way we do.