Part 1. Architecture

Edited by Louis Davidson

Database design and architecture are subjects that can be quite polarizing. You’re either super excited by them, or they tend to make you bored to tears and ready to hurl cartoon birds at cartoon pigs. At the SQL PASS conference last year, a keynote was given by Dr. David DeWitte, a Technical Fellow in Microsoft’s Data and Storage Platform Division. For a great number of people, it was amazing stuff that made us sad when he finished talking. For quite a few more, it was painfully uninteresting, because, quoting a person I overheard, “I’m not going to use this.” As a speaker, I’ve given a number of sessions on normalization that get an average speaker score for usefulness that was just above 3 out of 5, because half of the people loved it and the other half wanted me to speak about something else entirely but were kind enough to give me a 2 instead of the dreaded 1.

There in a nutshell loomed the $64,000 question. Is knowing about the architecture of SQL Server internals useful? Is understanding the proper way to do database design of any real value, even if you’re never going to directly design a query optimizer or even a database? Architectural understanding is like understanding why certain foods are good for you. A little understanding will help guide your eating habits, just like a bit of architectural knowledge will give you some insight into how to design and program to meet the needs of SQL Server’s architecture.