Describe how the database design work you do now is similar to or different from "textbook database design," such as one might learn in college or read in a text book or software manual.

Jules Bohanon, Lakeland, Florida:
     I've never taken a class, but I've taught a few. One key departure, I guess, from my programming style and what I've taught in classes is, I rarely (if ever) use a macro. I opt for VBA instead.

Assem Bayahi, Mourouj 1, Tunisia:
     Some basics learned in college are essential: like how to define tables relations (one_to_many, many_to_many,...) or how to avoid redundancy. Those basics are very useful when designing database. What is different is that by experience you know really how those choices and how details influence the database performance.

Md. Obaidul Haque Sarker, Dhaka, Bangladesh:
     I read lot of text book for database design. All of text book contain the basic knowledge about database such as entity, relationship, constraints, E-R diagram, normalization etc. Those information are scattered in different chapter in a book or in different book. But I can't get any real life scenario from text book where all of features are implemented together.

Ehtisham Rasheed, Sialkot, Pakistan:
     practical database design is not much different than "text book database design"... there are many techniques in text book like DFD, ER-Diagram, Normalization etc... personally i found Normalization really great in practical work... and my emphasis is on Normalization before actual coding...

Mark Horner, Bristol, England:
     All of my knowledge has come from on the job learning and self study through various internet websites which gives me a good working overview of how to apply best practice – I can’t say for sure how this differs from a taught course at college but from the small touchings on it my Uni course had in the first year I can say for sure my knowledge is a LOT more in-depth.

Bruce Bray, Phoenix, Arizona:
     Well, since I did not go to college, I could not accurately answer that question. But i will say that most of programming stems from mountains of books that I read on Microsoft Programming and TSQL coding.

Temitayo Ilori, Berea, Ohio:
     If need be, I first design and ERD and I make sure the tables conform to the normal form and the dependencies are okay. Then I use a database transformer to convert it to a relational database.
     I design database to suit the need of the client and the intended use. I consider these two factors in deciding the relationships between tables.

Grace Elaiza Seballos, Davao City, Philippines:
     It is more improved due to experience. In college days, or in texbooks, most of them are just samples. When it comes to real life, it becomes very different especially when you become exposed to different types of business logic in different industries. You get to know stuff (not really technical) through experience and mistakes. Like for example, in the old days, I would put the "price" field in a product table. But in my experience, that doesn't really work. The reason is, product prices changes overtime. If you change the price in the product table, this will affect every past reports that should have the computation of the old product price in it.