On the O'Reilly Network's PHP blog today, there's a new post bk jones that looks at the other side of application design, from the data's perspective.
If you have a sourceforge account, and are on your way to becoming the best thing to happen to the web since Yahoo or Google, then I beg of you to put a call out for people who understand database design fundamentals.
Here's the story: If you're a PHP developer, I don't really want you to learn how to design a database. No, really. I don't. I want you to write PHP. There are few people who do both things extremely well, because both take a good bit of time. If you're a PHP developer, I want you to write code that'll make my head spin. However, the path to greatness is to be conscious of your own ignorance - so just acknowledge that you've never done or studied database design, and go find someone who has!
He mentions three misconceptions to consider and avoid when developing a PHP application:
- The interface determines database design
- "I only need a small, simple database"
- "More tables makes for harder coding"
