Database structure design

Failure to plan the right data representation for the actual problem is known to be one of the most frequent mistakes in software design.

“Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around.”

-- Eric. S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar

We tend to find a lot of truth in the above quote, because as programmers, we found out that code is always easier to change than data. There's an easy explanation: the code is built by ourselves, while data is virtually supplied by thousands of people. But of course, to provide fully flexible solutions, we at DynArch are also writing smart code. ;-)

Before any database design can take place, the final application goals must be fully defined. And before any implementation begins, the structure of the database must be decided (regardless of the underlying engine which can be MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle or whatever).