Relational Databases 101

Learn the fundamentals of Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). Excerpt: The Microsoft Books Online (BOL) documentation seems to fall a bit short in this important subject, so this chapter might be helpful for those who need a more complete understanding of how to create a best-practice relational database. The problem faced by any database designer is knowing what's going to be stored ahead of time—before the first table is created. That's always been (and always will be) a problem. As I've said before, a customer rarely knows what they want until they don't get it.