Database Design Using Entity-Relationship Diagrams

Bagui and Earp's "Database Design Using Entity-Relationship Diagrams" is a very well written book. It's clear, concise, and well laid out. It also meets their intended audience and intent. From page xiii of the Preface: "This book is intended to be used by database practitioners and students for data modeling. It is also intended to be used as a supplemental text in database courses, systems analysis and design courses, and other courses that design and implement databases." And, from page xvii of the Introduction: "This book was written to aid students in database classes and to help database practitioners in understanding how to arrive at a definite, clear database design using an entity relationship (ER) diagram." The only reasons I give it a rating of four stars out of five instead of five stars out of five are purely a matter of taste. First, there's not a lot of breadth to this material. So, I'm not all that certain that a whole book is warranted (it really should be covered in full-fledged database books). Second, the majority of the book focuses on "Chen-like" ER diagrams because they are well-used and implementation independent (which is good reasoning). But, I'm pretty sure that most databases are relational nowadays, so more coverage in the vein of the last chapter (the Barker-like relational ER model) would be a good thing. If I could give the book four and one half stars, I would (it's really that good). But, since I can't, four stars will have to do. If you decide you really need a supplemental text in ER Diagrams, you can't go wrong with this book.