Database Design Should Be Agile

SPEAKER

Ron Ballard

AGENDA

18:00 Refreshments and networking

18:00 Start

19:30 Questions and networking

20:30 End

SYNOPSIS

In many projects, even those that claim to be agile, the database administration department insists that it must be the sole source of database design. They say that the database design must be done up-front, and must be complete, before one line of code is written.

They resist change to their designs or their practices. The result is usually over-complex, missing practical requirements, too big, and inefficient.

I have found, working in agile teams, that the database design can grow and change throughout the project. We can enforce good design, and we can keep the design in line with the needs of the organisation.

We end up with smaller, more efficient databases, that meet the needs of the applications required, and the needs of the data analysts who need to produce standard reports and also mine the data to inform those who are trying to improve the business functions of the organisation.

Because, in an agile project, we are always working with the users, we build exactly what they need and ruthlessly leave out those things that they do not need. We follow strict design principles that eliminate duplication and ambiguity from the database. We build automated tests that verify our database every day.

We provide useful documentation to help users of the database be clear about the data they are dealing with.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Ron Ballard studied Computer Science (with some other subjects) at Manchester University, graduating in 1973.

He worked on the development of a bibliographic database for the British Library and then spent 15 years working for database vendors, building database products, supporting them, building transactional applications and data warehouses using them, and teaching others to use them.

From 1996 to 2017 he was an independent database consultant working with big databases in large organisations. Ron has now retired but keeps himself occupied by writing and speaking about databases, and by volunteering with some major charities to assist them with agile development of data warehouses and migration to new systems. In 2017 Ron published his first book – Relational Databases For Agile Developers.

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