Archive - Minimal Modeling

Multi-join queries design: investigation

From the ground up: studying multi-join queries.

Jun 9 •

Alexey Makhotkin

May 2025

Systematic design of multi-join GROUP BY queries

I wrote a long-ish (5000+ words) tutorial on systematic design of complex analytical SQL queries.

May 25 •

Alexey Makhotkin

April 2025

Database Design Book released!

137-page PDF, €32. See table of contents and sample chapters.

Apr 21 •

Alexey Makhotkin

February 2025

Relational modeling challenge

"Make invalid states unrepresentable" and the relational model

Feb 2 •

Alexey Makhotkin

December 2024

Podcast guest appearance

Looking for some podcast collaboration opportunities

Dec 23, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

Historically, 4NF explanations are needlessly confusing

4NF presented in a straightforward way, with some investigation of history of teaching 4NF.

Dec 5, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

October 2024

I’d like to introduce an idea of “Date’s demon” (named in honor of Chris Date). Postulating the existence of this imaginary being, we can describe some…

Oct 26, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

Minimal Modeling and GenAI

Minimal model could be used as a source of high quality textual content to feed into your LLM.

Oct 2, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

July 2024

Path dependence in relational design

Path dependence may be an important concern in relational table design.

Jul 2, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

June 2024

Speaking at the Data Vault User Group 2024 Conference

Jun 28, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

Two draft chapters for the book

Jun 24, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

April 2024

Modeling legal guardianship

Some notes on either/or/or in logical modeling.

Apr 3, 2024 •

Alexey Makhotkin

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts