Product Description

Refactoring has proven its value in a wide range of development projects—helping software professionals improve system designs, maintainability, extensibility, and performance. Now, for the first time, leading agile methodologist Scott Ambler and renowned consultant Pramodkumar Sadalage introduce powerful refactoring techniques specifically designed for database systems.

Ambler and Sadalage demonstrate how small changes to table structures, data, stored procedures, and triggers can significantly enhance virtually any database design—without changing semantics. You’ll learn how to evolve database schemas in step with source code—and become far more effective in projects relying on iterative, agile methodologies.

This comprehensive guide and reference helps you overcome the practical obstacles to refactoring real-world databases by covering every fundamental concept underlying database refactoring. Using start-to-finish examples, the authors walk you through refactoring simple standalone database applications as well as sophisticated multi-application scenarios. You’ll master every task involved in refactoring database schemas, and discover best practices for deploying refactorings in even the most complex production environments.

The second half of this book systematically covers five major categories of database refactorings. You’ll learn how to use refactoring to enhance database structure, data quality, and referential integrity; and how to refactor both architectures and methods. This book provides an extensive set of examples built with Oracle and Java and easily adaptable for other languages, such as C#, C++, or VB.NET, and other databases, such as DB2, SQL Server, MySQL, and Sybase.

Using this book’s techniques and examples, you can reduce waste, rework, risk, and cost—and build database systems capable of evolving smoothly, far into the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #342457 in Books
• Published on: 2006-03-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From the Back Cover

Refactoring has proven its value in a wide range of development projects, helping software professionals improve system designs, maintainability, extensibility, and performance. Now, for the first time, leading agile methodologist Scott Ambler and renowned consultant Pramodkumar Sadalage introduce powerful refactoring techniques specifically designed for database systems.

Ambler and Sadalage demonstrate how small changes to table structures, data, stored procedures, and triggers can significantly enhance virtually any database design -- without changing semantics. You’ll learn how to evolve database schemas in step with source code -- and become far more effective in projects relying on iterative, agile methodologies.

This comprehensive guide and reference covers every fundamental concept underlying database refactoring, and helps you overcome the practical obstacles to refactoring real-world databases. Start-to-finish examples walk you through refactoring both simple standalone database applications and sophisticated multi-application scenarios. You’ll master every task involved in refactoring database schemas, and discover best practices for deploying refactorings in even the most complex production environments.

The second half of this book systematically covers five major categories of database refactorings. You’ll learn how to use refactoring to enhance database structure, data quality, and referential integrity; and how to refactor both architectures and methods. The book provides an extensive set of examples, built with Oracle and Java, and easily adaptable for other languages, such as C#, C++, or VB.NET.

Using this book’s techniques and examples, you can reduce waste, rework, risk, and cost -- and build database systems capable of evolving smoothly, far into the future.

About the Author

Scott W. Ambler is software process improvement (SPI) consultant living just north of Toronto. He is founder and thought leader of the Agile Modeling (AM) (www.agilemodeling.com), Agile Data (AD) (www.agiledata.org), Enterprise Unified Process (EUP) (www.enterpriseunifiedprocess.com), and Agile Unified Process (AUP) (www.ambysoft.com/unifiedprocess) methodologies. Scott is the (co-)author of several books, including Agile Modeling (John Wiley & Sons), Agile Database Techniques (John Wiley & Sons), The Object Primer Third Edition (Cambridge University Press), The Enterprise Unified Process (Prentice Hall), and The Elements of UML 2.0 Style (Cambridge University Press). Scott is a contributing editor with Software Development magazine (www.sdmagazine.com) and has spoken and keynoted at a wide variety of international conferences, including Software Development, UML World, Object Expo, Java Expo, and Application Development. Scott graduated from the University of Toronto with a Master of Information Science. In his spare time, Scott studies the Goju Ryu and Kobudo styles of karate.

Pramod J. Sadalage is a consultant for ThoughtWorks, an enterprise application development and integration company. He first pioneered the practices and processes of evolutionary database design and database refactoring in 1999 while working on a large J2EE application using the Extreme Programming (XP) methodology. Pramod writes and speaks about database administration on evolutionary projects, the adoption of evolutionary processes with regard to databases, and evolutionary practices’ impact upon database administration, in order to make it easy for everyone to use evolutionary design in regard to databases. When he is not working, you can find him spending time with his family and trying to improve his running.

Customer Reviews

A book which states the obvious
I disagree with the first reviewer of this book. I think the reason for that is what he focused on.

"Refactoring" by Martin Fowler suffers from the same problem. The value in this book does not lie in the refactorings themselves. The value lies in the 100+ pages at the front of the book where the process and environment needed to refactor databases is described.

After having read these few chapters, a lot of people I have talked to are left with a feeling of having read a lot of ideas that should have been obvious from the word go. Yet, not a single one of them were able to come up with these ideas by themselves. That is where the real value of this book lies. This is not a blueprint book which teaches you how to go about refactoring database schemas. This book teaches how to remove the obstacles that make such refactorings impossible.

I think books which state the obvious ideas people don't seem able to dream up by themselves are the most valuable. Therefore I think this book warrants four stars.

Disappointing
I bought this book hoping it would help answer some specific design problems I have at work. From the reviews at the US amazon site I expected this to be quite good.

I found that most of the refactorings were fairly obvious and didn't really warrant being put in a book.

There is still a gap in the market that this book tried to fill, so hopefully someone will step in.

Brings Data into the 21st Century
This is an excellent book! If you are from the Data world, please read this to see what can be done to make databases more flexible and resilent in the face of change. If you are a software developer, read and absorb the lessons, then leave this on your favourite DBA's desk for them to read too.

The book starts with a quick summary, useful if you only have a chance to skim this at first read. Then the authors describe how the patterns latter on in the book can and should be used. Another aspect I like is the way that typical objections are discussed and dealt with, as well as being realistic about potential problems. The rest of the book is made up of various patterns for database refactoring. There is good emphasis on the use of tests and testing to keep your data and application intact while you refactor.

You are going to get practical advice and guidance here which makes it worth the time to read this book. The writing style is easy to follow and gets to the point quickly and effectively.

Get this book, and absorb and apply the contents - you will never look at a data design, or a database in quite the same way again.