Database Design and Relational Theory

Dedication

In computing, elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a quality that decides between success and failure.

—Edsger W. Dijkstra

The ill design is most ill for the designer.

—Hesiod

It is to be noted that when any part of this paper is dull there is design in it.

—Sir Richard Steele

The idea of a formal design discipline is often rejected on account of vague cultural / philosophical condemnations such as “stifling creativity”; this is more pronounced ... where a romantic vision of “the humanities” in fact idealizes technical incompetence ...

[We] know that for the sake of reliability and intellectual control we have to keep the design simple and disentangled.

—Edsger W. Dijkstra

My designs are strictly honorable.

—Anon.

To my wife Lindy and my daughters Sarah and Jennie with all my love