[AccessD] [dba-SQLServer] Users in SQL Server - well OT now...

Darryl Collins darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au
Tue Dec 6 16:52:04 CST 2011


" Tangentially relevant and directed to listers with children: I want to recommend at the highest level a book called "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe" by Michael S. Schneider. You and your children will have 110% fun going through this book, and both of you will end up smarter."

Looks good, just purchased a copy from Amazon - thanks :)

Cheers
Darryl

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller
Sent: Wednesday, 7 December 2011 2:27 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [dba-SQLServer] Users in SQL Server - well OT now...

To add to and reinforce your point, even though I have almost all the Data-Architecture tools available (ERwin, PowerDesigner, DeZign, Rational DA, etc.), more often than not I resort to a pencil and paper to lay out the initial sketch. I don't bother describing the columns at this stage -- just the tables and the joins, and I can use the eraser to refine the Rdefs. When DBs are extremely complex (i.e. several hundred tables) then I skip the pencil-stage and go directly to PowerDesigner (my choice) or ERwin (more often the client's choice, despite its inadequacies). But for SMBs, my first choice remains pencil and paper, where I capture the logic. Maybe it's similar to painters who first sketch the landscape in pencil and only afterward return to the studio and the canvas and the palette. Either way, the fact remains that I understand the pencil-UI way more intuitively than anything yet invented, including all of the late Steve Jobs's inventions.
Granted, it took a while to learn how to describe a circle and a square and a triangle, and then to write the alphabet, but I learned all that before attending First Grade in school, and would imagine that in these days so do almost all kids.

Tangentially relevant and directed to listers with children: I want to recommend at the highest level a book called "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe" by Michael S. Schneider. You and your children will have 110% fun going through this book, and both of you will end up smarter.

Arthur

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 7:56 PM, Darryl Collins < darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au> wrote:

> Hehehehe.... exactly.   All jokes aside, the paperback book is in many
> ways a nearly perfect technology.  It is a bit like the traditional 
> mousetrap or the standard design on the traditional dial telephone.  
> Some designs are sooo close to being optimal there is little advantage 
> in tweaking them.
>
> --
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