My last post looked at some abstractions that might do good things for me, but as with any design decision (or even design think-hard-about) it’s a good idea to validate it. Even if it’s not possible to prove correct, it can at least be possible to determine it’s not a …
In my last post, regarding Operations, at one point I started to write “and everything can have Tags”… when I realized that can happen, but takes a little extra work. What if they could, though? Early in this series when I wrote about data modeling I recognized that many entities …
Unlike at work, where ‘operations’ means ‘keeping Production from tipping over’, here I mean ‘what things do we want to be able to do with this application?’ In database terms, we want the full range of CRUD actions: Create, Read, Update, and Delete records. This includes any other artifacts (such …
As is sadly typical during my A-Z Blog Challenge runs, I’m struggling in the middle. Ah well, it’s the weekend, time to catch up! In a recent post I said that now that I’ve got a sense of the column types and their configuration, it’s time to get specific about …
Often during the A-Z Blog Challenge I use ‘M Day’ as a ‘Midpoint Check-In’, listing the posts up to this point. This time I think I’ll summarize my current design position. Overall, I have a sense of where I’m going and how to get there, but there is much that …
I was planning to show how various entities might be defined, using the attribute declarations described yesterday… but it’s been a rough week. Instead, I’ve been cleaning up some of my libraries, and found some features I hadn’t considered that I’d very much like to see in my graphical user …
Yes, taking the easy route on naming the “K Day” post. There’s enough thinking in this one I don’t feel bad about it. Yesterday I looked at the data types available in calibre for custom columns , and made a few notes about how I might handle column definition. Time …
In looking at the data models, I’ve focused mostly on ‘user-defined columns’ in the expectation that I’d use the same mechanism for ‘built-in columns’. Which raises the possibility of someone taking the library and bending it in strange ways, doing things I had no reason to think they would. If …
“I’ll just put together a little proof of concept application. Get some screenshots, that’ll look sexy.” Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that. My background is in software development. I’ve been writing code for more than thirty years now, both for work and to support my hobbies (as in “make tools to …
‘Test your assumptions’ is an important step in any kind of analysis and design exercise. It appears calibre’s database design is not entirely the cause of poor performance at higher record volumes. Don’t get me wrong, the design and implementation of the database can certainly be tightened up… but I …