Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
9
The Interdependence
Problem
You live in the age of interdependence. Borders don't
count for much or stop much, good or bad, anymore.
—Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States (1946- )
It is quite a three pipe problem.
—Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes
(1892),
“The Red-Headed League”
he challenge of database design, more than anything else, is the challenge of the
interconnectedness of all things. The interdependence issues are in principle so cen-
tral to database design that perhaps this topic should have been titled
Zen and the Art of
Database
or
Buddhism for Databases
. As if designing indexes, materialized views, parti-
tioning, and other design qualities were not each individually complex enough, the
nasty little secret is that these design problems are woefully and massively intercon-
nected. The choice of a single index may remove the need for a materialized view or vice
versa. Choice of partitioning can affect join efficiency so dramatically that index design
may need a complete rethink. Multidimensional clustering (MDC) can obviate the
need for B+ indexes. So we have a problem upon a problem: each of the design choices
is exponentially complex pushing the limits of human designers to cope. When taken in
combination, the possible combinations and considerations are so explosively large it
appears far beyond the ability of mere mortals to manage.
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