Mike Sherrill 'Catcall'

4,422 reputation

620

bio	website
	location	United States
	age	57
visits	member for	2 years, 2 months
	seen	yesterday
stats	profile views	107

Long-time database design and software development consultant. My clients included evetrything from Fortune 100 companies to non-profits and mom-and-pop companies. I've worked with SQL databases since 1985. I'm a database generalist; I'm comfortable with every modern SQL dbms. My home server runs a half-dozen different database management systems. I test most of my answers under more than one of them.

I've also developed relational models for implementation in non-SQL environments, like Lotus Notes and plain C++ code.

I'm known for frequently saying

ID numbers have nothing to do with normalization.
Everything you know about state codes is wrong.
Table names, column names, etc., are your database's API.
Natural keys reduce the number of joins, and often improve performance.
5NF is your friend.
Don't assume. Test.

	4,422 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	2 years, 2 months
620 badges		location	United States		seen	yesterday

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32 Revisions

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Apr 15	revised	Proper indexes or anything else to optimize Faster hardware.
Apr 14	revised	Database design: Dividing multiple identical tables, good or bad? Extended examples.
Apr 14	revised	Database design: Dividing multiple identical tables, good or bad? Extended examples.
Apr 8	revised	How to enforce full integer (no floating point)? Cite 1992 SQL standard.
Apr 8	revised	How to enforce full integer (no floating point)? Added DDL.
Apr 6	revised	Defining constraints in `CREATE TABLE` statements Note re version control.
Apr 2	revised	Foreign Keys with Composite Key Unique constraint syntax
Feb 24	revised	Add Check Constraint On Varchar Column to enforce no duplicates added 191 characters in body
Jan 16	revised	Is there any way to get recently inserted value in a table without using aggregate functions? Cut the closing thanks.
Jan 12	revised	Group By on column from joined table Ideas for testing.
Jan 11	revised	Group By on column from joined table Link to docs about optimizing limit queries.
Jan 8	revised	How do I know what indexes to create for a table added 16 characters in body
Nov 6	revised	Broken SELECT in Sql Server Compact 3.5 SP2? More detail, links to Microsoft documentation.
Nov 2	revised	PostgreSQL 9.1 - Asynchroneous commits performance boost Addes SET synchronous_commit = on
Oct 11	revised	Is there a reason to use extremely abbreviated table names? Spelling.
Oct 7	revised	added 145 characters in body
Oct 6	revised	Splitting a database into multiple databases edited tags
Aug 30	revised	Is there a way to recover a dropped mysql database? Corrected spelling. ("Fegiment" is a word, but it's the wrong word here.)
Jul 26	revised	What is the best practice for physical deployment of data marts? New tag, multi-tenant
Jun 14	revised	Sort order specified in primary key, yet sorting is executed on SELECT Link to Usenet discussion including David Portas, Kalen Delaney, and Tibor Karaszi, among others.