168 CHAPTER 9 The Interdependence Problem
In truth, tackled in a direct and comprehensive manner this is not a problem that
human beings can grapple with, leading us to the possible conclusion that we should
probably just give up. Close this book, turn on the TV, and leave database design for
someone else. But databases do get designed by human beings, and designed well. To do
this people use a number of strategies we will discuss. Very little has been formally pub-
lished on this topic until now, though there have been some loose reflections in various
articles in recent years. Automated design utilities, discussed in Chapter12, have had to
grapple with this problem as well. However, these automated utilities have the compu-
tational power of the database ...