Once again, I find myself feeling bad for not writing recently.  I guess the duties of family, job and the holidays got the best of me these last many months.  I hope to write more frequently in the next several weeks and months…

Anyway, I came across an article related to one of my initial posts that I felt compelled to share, with the hope that you will read it here.  In this article entitled Seven Deadly Sins of Database Design, Jason Tiret of Embarcadero Technologies cites seven ‘deadly’ sins that one can commit when designing a physical data model (many of these points also apply to conceptual/logical models, too):

1. Poor or missing documentation for database(s) in production
2. Little or no normalization
3. Not treating the data model like a living, breathing organism
4. Improper storage of reference data
5. Not using foreign keys or check constraints
6. Not using domains and naming standards
7. Not choosing primary keys properly

I think Jason has nailed many of the additional core issues with planning and designing physical data model implementations, above and beyond my initial post on design and normalization.  Thanks for the great work, Jason!