Challenges
63. What decade is this quote from?
62. A surrogate key without an alterate key, can it be?
61. A Party for Vanishing Definitions
60. PDM = Implementation?
59. Making the Connections
58. Data Slang
57. Who is responsible for the data model actually being used?
56. SCD Type 3 for me?
55. How long will the modeling take?
54. Who owns the data model?
53. Data Modeling in the Cloud 
52. Agile Enterprise Data Modeling,  an oxymoron?
51. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse
50. Where does XML fit?
49. Is Cost a Fact?
48. Swimming in Rough Water
47. Producing Adequate Definitions
46. Data becoming Metadata
45. My Hero Zero
44. As low as you can go
43. AAs vs. DAs
42. What's a good name for the high level model?
41. Business intelligence?
40. Is GUID good?
39. Canonical Data Model Defined
38. The Spam Model
37. Product Availability
36. Ontology and Taxonomy
35. Customer Id
34. Subtype key
33. Timeless Dimensional Model
32. Thinking Data
31. A Dimensional EDM
30. Recursive fact table?
29. Broken shells
28. Null AK?
27. Data Dictionary, are you out there?
26. Rules on rules
25. Super Star
24. Definition Differences
23. Creative hierarchy
22. Getting physical with subtypes
21. Role of the data architect
20. Decoding codes
19. Aggregation, summarization, and abstraction demystified
18. Dimensional logical?
17. Global Address
16. To surrogate key or not to surrogate key, that is the question
15. Medals for Model Layout
14. The Person Identifier
13. Enterprise Data Model ROI
12. Logical Data Modeling in practice
11. A Recursive Riddle
10. A Permission Puzzle
9. A tough rule
8. Define a "Thing"
7. We live in a world of classifications
6. Taming the wild west modeler
5. Technical questions asked during a job interview for a data-related position
4. Techniques in reviewing a data model
3. Convincing project teams of the need to normalize
2. Create a logical data model?
1. Having the same primary key in two or more logical entities

 

Design Challenge #63: What decade is this quote from?

One of the most important books in our field is William Kent's, Data and Reality, which was published back in....well a long time ago.

Technics Publications has the honor of republishing this book, and I have updated this 3rd edition with my commentary. Graeme Simsion has written the foreword, and the book can be pre-ordered on Amazon and through Technics Publications, with a scheduled release date of March 1st, 2012.

This is one of the quotes in the book:

 We do not, it seems, have a very clear and commonly agreed upon set of notions about data - either what they are, how they should be fed and cared for, or their relation to the design of programming languages and operating systems.