January 18, 2003 Notes - guest SIG leader John Davey
John Davey followed up on suggestions that were made at December's Meeting and showed us how he implemented them in his cell tower database project in progress. He discussed how he applied Hernandez's suggestions re. constructing table relationships (Chapter 10 in Hernandez's book _Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design_ (Addison-Wesley 1997, ISBN 0201694719)) and experienced database administrator John Ashmead said he was doing unnecessary work considering every possible relationship with every table as Hernandez advises, and explained that in real life each database has a few key tables which were the core and where you should focus your attention. The other, more subsidiary tables branch off of the core tables. Make sure you get the core table relationships right, and the others will be easy. He also illustrated this on the blackboard using tables from the cell tower database. Thus the discussion cut to the core of Chapter 10, "Table Relationships."

February 22, 2003 Notes - guest SIG leader John Davey
John Davey followed up on suggestions that were made at January's Meeting re. primary and foreign keys as well as table relationships and showed us how he implemented them in his cell tower database project in progress. His notes about the database project, which he has kept updated, are at http://mywebpages.comcast.net/jadavey/Test/TowerDB.htm.

March 22, 2003 Notes - guest presenters Jay Talbott, Michael Levesque, and Barry Rochford
Three representatives of Alpha Software (Mr. Jay Talbott, Buckingham, PA, Mr. Michael Levesque, Wrightstown, PA, and Mr. Barry Rochford, Wrightstown, PA) gave a presentation on Alpha 5 database management system software to Database SIG prior to giving a broader presentation at the general meeting. (11:00am-12:00pm in the Auditorium). The winner of the Database SIG Alpha 5 raffle graciously donated the Alpha 5 software he had just won to the Girl Scouts of America, represented by Janet Garret. The Alpha 5 representatives also presented at Web Design SIG (12:30-2:00 PM, Room A02) about Alpha Five Web Application Server, a new application (for sharing databases over the internet) that is still under development.

April 26, 2003 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
John Ashmead led a discussion on Chapter 11 ("Business Rules") of Michael J. Hernandez's book, Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design (Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0201694719).

May 17, 2003 Notes
The planned, joint Database SIG- Web Design SIG presentation on Active Server Pages with the Tugboat Website Team that put the Carl Wayne Tug Database on the web was postponed. So we had a two-part SIG meeting: First John Davey showed the Tugboat Database website live via an internet connection as a teaser for the time when the Tugboat Team members will give a more complete presentation (probably Fall 2003). Then Linda Kalb led Journal Club, starting with Edgar Frank Codd's seminal article A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks," E.F. Codd, Communications of the ACM 13(6):377-387, 1970, followed by The Great Primary Key Debate and posted comments on the article that John Davey had found on builder.com.

June 21, 2003 Notes - guest SIG leader John Ashmead
Guest SIG leader John Ashmead presented "Getting Started in FileMaker Pro," with demos from a business contact database.

October 18, 2003 Notes We finished Chapter 11, "Business Rules," and got most of the way through Chapter 12, "Views," from from Michael J. Hernandez's book Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design (Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0201694719).

November 8, 2003 Notes We finished Chapter 12, "Views," from Michael J. Hernandez's book Database Design for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design (Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0201694719) and also got all the way through Chapter 13, "Reviewing Data Integrity."

December 20, 2003 Notes - guest presenter John Ashmead
John Ashmead presented the first part of a two-part presentation on Database-Driven websites. See more detail here.

--Linda M. Kalb