A rush of codd to the hand

Sometimes, typos can be useful. Earlier today I wrote "rush of codd to the hand" in an e-mail when I should have written "rush of code to the hand". The e-mail concerned a not-very-pretty system of my acquaintance (I wrote it), in which the programmer (moi) had starting coding way too early in the development cycle out of sheer youthful enthusiasm.



In my experience, a rush of code to the hand is a very common problem in software development. A problem that is only adequately tackled through the application of large amounts of experience. Looking back now on the programmer I was then (we are talking 1992-93 time frame here), I simply was not experienced enough to make the right call. You live, you make mistakes, you learn, you move on.



Speaking of moving on, it is about time that I re-vectored this article to its proper subject matter which, is, believe it or not, relational databases. The "codd" in the serendipitous phrase "rush of codd to the hand" is Edgar F. Codd[1]. Codd was a British computer scientist who is best remembered as one of the founding fathers of the science of relational databases. Most students of relational databases will, sooner or later, come across his name; most likely cloaked in acronym form such as BCNF. BCNF is short for Boyce Codd Normal Form[2]. The acronym BCNF pops up a lot in database design and in particular, in an important soul cleansing endeavor known as database normalization[3].



In my experience, sheer enthusiasm can lead designers to introduce relational database into their designs way too early in the development cycle. The thought process seems to go something like this:



"We need code for the algorithms. Ok, let's use Java/C#/Python/Php (whatever). We have data that the algorithms will work on. We need a database. Ok, let's use Oracle/SQL Server/MySQL/Postgres (whatever)."



The key word here is the word "data". There are many forms of data that fit the relational database model like a glove. These forms of data are extremely commonplace. Things like customer details, line items of invoices, product inventories etc. etc. It is no wonder that relational databases are as popular as they are.

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