Chapter 4. Characteristics of a great relational database
Relational theory isn’t a religion no matter how it may appear—although it has about the same argument-to-agreement ratio. Relational theory is a fairly strict set of principles that have been set up and reasonably well adhered to, not just by intolerant, unbendable, and downright ornery data architects, but by the people who create relational engines to process data. Why are data architect types so interested in doing things in a manner that’s uncomfortable for programmers? Because our goal is to satisfy the relational engine’s need and we don’t worry too much about the fact that a C# coder has to write a bit more code on occasion. Heck, if lines of code and ease of programming were our primary motivators, our job as data architects would be easy; we’d just create one big, generic table to store all data. No, the reason is that we must match the data structures to the needs of the engine and satisfy programmer needs as a secondary (albeit extremely important) need.
