Datasheet

Summary
This chapter has been quite diverse, covering the major components that make up an Access, SQL
Server, and Oracle database. If you weren’t already familiar with them, you should now understand the
components of each of these databases and how they tie together to comprise a single database. You
should also have gained a deeper appreciation for each of these databases and know which database
will meet your business requirements for future projects that you may work on.
You also took a look at relational database design and the process of normalization. Armed with this
information, you should be able to set out and design a database for your own use. As you become more
familiar with the process of normalization through practical implementation, your skills for designing
and normalizing a database will grow and the process will become easier.
At the end of the chapter, I walked you through the process of creating the sample databases that are
used throughout the rest of this book. You built your Access database directly in Access, creating the
tables, primary keys, and foreign key relationships. Using Visual Studio 2005, you connected to a SQL
Server instance and used the designer within the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to create
the tables, set the primary keys, and build the foreign key relationships. The tables created in your
Oracle database were created using scripts. You also used scripts to create the primary and foreign key
relationships in those Oracle tables.
To summarize, you should know:
❑ A Microsoft Access database consists of a single file that contains all of the objects (e.g., tables,
indexes, queries) in the database.
❑ A Microsoft SQL Server database comprises at least two files, and the data file contains all of the
objects (e.g., tables, indexes, stored procedures, views) that make up the database.
❑ An Oracle database comprises at least five files, and the data file contains all of the objects (e.g.,
tables, indexes, stored procedures, views) that make up the database.
❑ A relational database contains tables, rows, and columns that are related to one another.
❑ The process of normalization involves normalizing your data through formal methods to
eliminate duplicate data, and to separate data into multiple related tables.
❑ The three forms of normalization are known as first normal form, second normal form, and
third normal form.
Chapter 2 provides an introduction to ADO.NET. ADO.NET comprises the data access classes that you’ll
be using to access and manage the data in your various databases.
30
Chapter 1
04_58894x ch01.qxd 10/13/05 5:54 PM Page 30