Database Design for Mere Mortals™: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition

Documenting Your Actions

If you've exhausted all other options and still come to the conclusion that you need to bend or break the rules, then you must document each rule you break and each action you take! It is important that you document your changes because doing so will compel you to think about the consequences of what you are about to do and it provides a means of recording the changes you make to the database structure. Should you decide later that the modifications did not provide a significant increase in processing performance, you can use the documentation as a guide to reverse the modifications you initially made.

These are the items that you should record:

• The reason you're breaking the rules. Increasing processing performance ...