Re: [Slightly OT] data model books/resources?

In the last exciting episode, aaron(dot)glenn(at)gmail(dot)com ("Aaron Glenn") wrote:
> Anyone care to share the great books, articles, manifestos, notes,
> leaflets, etc on data modelling they've come across? Ideally I'd like
> to find a great college level book on data models, but I haven't come
> across one that even slightly holds "definitive resource"-type status.
>
> Feel free to reply off list to keep the clutter down - I'd be happy to
> summarize responses for the list.

Any web search involving the word "modelling" is likely to take you
down some wrong paths :-).

One interesting looking web site with a barrel of examples is
<http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/index.htm>.

A problem with this is that it is common for your application
framework to, a priori, strongly affect the shape of the data model.

Thus, if you're building for Ruby on Rails, you'll be drawn into
models that are RoR-shaped. If you use a particular OO language,
there will probably be strong temptation to try to map directly onto
its object model, which will, again, heavily affect the shape of your
data models.

It seems likely that this factor (which might be simplified to "to one
with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, including your thumb")
will shape things almost moreso than the direct domain of the problem.
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