I saw Ami Levin at the PASS Summit 2011 presenting on Loop Iterators in Execution Plans. It was on my top 3 sessions last year at the Summit. He has an excellent way of using visuals to explain things. The session for the PASS Data Architecture VC on Thursday (July 26th) is great session on Primary Keys and relational databases and the rules surrounding them. All Developers need to watch the presentation.
Here is an article written by Ami recently and review by Dr. SQL Louis Davidson. Excellent step by step on how to normalization a many-to-many relationship into the proper table structure using Data Modeling.
Subject: Where are My (Primary) Keys?
Start Time: Thursday, July 26th, 2012 12:00 PM US Central Time
End Time: Thursday, July 26th, 2012 1:00 PM US Central Time
Presenter: Ami Levin
Live Meeting Link: Attendees LiveMeeting
Where Are My (Primary) Keys?
In this session, we revisit some of the fundamental design principals of relational databases—normalization rules, key selection, and the controversies associated with these issues—from a very hands-on, practical perspective. We also consider the benefits and challenges of using different types of keys (natural, surrogates, artificial, others) from multiple aspects, including data consistency, application development, maintenance, portability, and performance.
Session takeaways:
• Understand the profound impact of key selection on the entire application lifecycle
• Learn to identify when it is best to use natural or artificial keys • Learn how to minimize performance, portability, and maintenance issues during the early database design phase
Ami Levin
Ami Levin CTO, DBSophic
Ami Levin is a Microsoft SQL Server MVP since 2006, with over 20 years of experience in development and IT. For the past 14 years, he has been consulting, teaching, writing, and speaking about SQL Server worldwide. Ami's areas of expertise are data modeling, database design, T-SQL, and performance tuning. He leads the Israeli SQL Server user group (ISUG), moderates the Hebrew MSDN SQL Server support forum, and is a regular speaker at Microsoft Tech-Ed Israel, Dev Academy, and other SQL Server conferences. Ami speaks often at user group meetings in Israel and Europe and writes articles about SQL Server.