Gio Wiederhold: Database Design, 2nd Edition. 
Table of Contents

© 1995, 1997, 2001 (Copyright Notice) by Gio Wiederhold

Notes for the Recreated Version

This version, for distribution by ACM, was recreated in part from the original TEX source files and macros, and in part, where the original files could not be recovered from archive tapes, from a planned, but unpublished 3rd edition. The figures, originally drawn at McGraw-Hill, were scanned in and converted into MAC Pict formats. The sizes vary somewhat from the orignals. The typesetting was redone using TEXTURES (by Blue Sky Software, Portland OR) and converted to PDF format with Adobe Distiller.

Because of these changes, and changes in font standards over the intervening years, this version is not a literal image of the original source as published by McGraw-Hill in 1983.  It does contain all the material originally published.  A small number of typos were corrected and there is some additional material from the third edition. All chapters start with their original page numbers, and all figure numbers and most equation, example, and table numbers remain identical. Some chapters have grown in size and will have overlapping page numbers with their successor chapters.
The index could not be automatically recreated and was retyped by Voy Wiederhold. However, because of the changes in the text some of the reference page numbers in the index will not match the page for the referenced entry in this text as it now is distributed. Since the text has grown somewhat in size, referenced topics may appear later in the text than indicated in the index. The corrected section numbers below can help in matching index pages numbers to actual chapter pages.

Relevance

Although the first edition of this book appeared in 1977, and the second edition in 1983, there is still much relevant material here which does not appear in subsequent works.  A small number of copies are still being sold every year by McGraw-Hill.  Specifically, this book follows a bottom-up approach, starting with hardware and file parameters. These parameters are utilized throughout.  It hence allows the reader to predict the performance of alternative designs for new databases and database systems with good -- engineering precision -- accuracy. The need for such analyses has diminished since most databases are now built on commercial database system software. Use of large packages allows few alternatives, little insight, but easier experimentation. This book has continued to serve the small market where performance is a concern, novel methods or large scale operations are envisaged, full-scale experiments are difficult, and simplistic assumptions will fail.

Another feature of this book is conceptually helpful. We do not present the structural features of relational, hierarchical, and network databases as competing which other, but rather consider them in a continuum of increased binding choices. This approach is again helpful when complex systems are to be analyzed, since the tradeoffs made in binding choices are crucial when performance and long-term maintenance issues must be balanced.

There has been, of course, much progress since this book has appeared.  Databases are now part of everyone's computing concepts, and their use does not require a deep technological competence. My own subsequent research has focused on intelligent technology to exploit databases for decision-making.  Much remains to be done do make atabases a true service for end-users. Some references can be found on my webpages, at  http://www-db.stanford.edu/people/gio.html.

Support

Partial support for recreation of this book was provided by NSF, through their Digital Library II program. Dan Siroker scanned the pictures in, for subsequent integration into the text. Arthur Keller provided directions for the resetting process on the Macintosh, and Donnel Gray converted and inserted the figures. Richard Snodgrass and Michael Ley provided motivation and advice on how to do the conversion right. The remaining errors are my responsibility; as Donald Knuth once told me `one cannot write without making errors'; do let me know about any errors and problems with the material.

Gio Wiederhold (gio@cs.stanford.edu), Feb. 2001.

Brief Table of Contents with HTML pointers