Normalization or Orthogonalization?

 

Generally normalization refers to the process of standardizing disparate measurements for the purpose of comparability.  Why do we refer to relational DB design as normalization?  The goal is not to be able to compare data or the system itself to something.  The goal is to represent the data in as concise a manner as possible.  This more closely resembles the process of orthogonalization from linear algebra.

One of the first things you learn in linear algebra is how to make a matrix orthogonal.  This is taught early because it's a necessary step to conduct prior to attempting more complex operations.  Relational database design is essentially the same exercise, with the same purpose.  Eliminate the redundancy in your model to make your life easier once you start carrying out more complex operations.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Engineering Truisms

This is a brief collection of quotes, laws, and truisms that I've gathered over the years.  I've kept those that have consistently proved themselves across organizations and projects during my career.
Read more

The Telescoping Constructor (Anti-Pattern)

Image
The Telescoping Constructor Looks like this: Widget(varA) {...} Widget(varA, varB) {...} Widget(varA, varB, varC) {...} or Widget widget = new Widget(x); widget.setVarA(...) widget.setVarB(...) widget.setVarC(...) There are both shared and specific problems for each variety.  Let's talk about both. The 1st case, supernumerary constructors. What's wrong with this? Well, the good news is you provide  quiet consumption since there's a bespoke constructor for every use case.  Rather than have noisy construction, where the consumer must fill in a bunch of nulls, you move the noise into the implementation.  We shouldn't make assumptions on how many times the class will be used, so keeping the complexity to ourselves is generous and will lead to a more maintainable macro system. However, one problem here is that the end consumer is not restricted in their choice of constructors.  Like shopping at the super market, somet
Read more

A Strategic Approach to Precision Process Automation

Image
The global tech labor arbitrage trade has matured since its start in the Clinton era.  We've witnessed real estate in places like Mumbai and Singapore appreciate to levels rivaling NY and London.  The rising tide lifts all boats.  As global tech labor costs have flattened somewhat, software has gotten more expensive to produce and maintain.  The market is betting that AI will largely alleviate this by supplanting much of software engineering as a practice.  However, until this plays out, being judicious about when and how to use software is more important than ever.   While it's constructive to build software systems as "black boxes," it's folly to view them as crystal balls.  Increasingly, software is operations .  That engineer who knows the code like the back of his hand is your foreman.  Code is not static, it's constantly evolving to meet business demands and improve efficiency.  "Software Engineering is programming integrated over time."  Th
Read more