Freelancing is becoming more and more popular these days. While most freelancers are a one-man band, that’s not the only option. You could be a part of a collective and collaborate on larger and more complex projects. A data model that could power a freelancers collective’s app is the topic of today’s article. Freelancing is not new, but it’s becoming more and more popular. Working from 9:00 to 17:00 has certain advantages, but it also comes with many disadvantages.

You’ve probably made some of these mistakes when you were starting your database design career. Maybe you’re still making them, or you’ll make some in the future. We can’t go back in time and help you undo your errors, but we can save you from some future (or present) headaches. Reading this article might save you many hours spent fixing design and code problems, so let’s dive in. I’ve split the list of errors into two main groups: those that are non-technical in nature and those that are strictly technical.

In the previous two parts, we’ve presented the live database model for a subscription-based business and a data warehouse (DWH) we could use for reporting. While it’s obvious that they should work together, there was no connection between these two models. Today, we’ll take that next step and write the code to transfer data from the live database into our DWH. The Data Models Before we dive into the code, let’s remind ourselves of the two models we’ll work with.

Can you design an OLAP database model from an OLTP model? In this article, we’ll show you how! This is the second article of our data warehouse (DWH) series. You can find the first one here. The idea behind the series is to start with the OLTP (Online Transaction Processing) database model, present a possible solution for the reporting/OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) data model, and then finally consider the code we’ll use to perform the ETL process.

Welcome to a new series that shows you the practical side of the data warehouse (DWH)! In the first article, we’ll tackle a data model for a subscription business. In previous data warehouse articles (The Star Schema, The Snowflake Schema, Star Schema vs. Snowflake Schema) we focused more on the theory. In this series, we’ll show you how you could create a data warehouse for a real-life application, such as a database model.

There isn’t much chance you’ve missed the whole idea of the sharing economy – whether you like it or not. Popularized by companies like Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, and many others, it lets people earn some cash by renting out their unused stuff. Let’s see the data model behind such an application. Got a spare room? Sign up with Airbnb and make some extra money renting it out. Got a car and some free time?

If there’s a way to order groceries online, why not use it? This article examines the data model behind a grocery store’s delivery system. We still get a special feeling from picking something from the garden and then preparing it right away – but it’s not something we can do often. Today’s fast pace doesn’t allow it. In fact, sometimes it doesn’t even allow us to go to the store to “pick” our groceries.

Turn-based games and their map-based counterparts have been popular for a long time. Suppose we were to take such games into the 21st century by making them digital. What data model is up to the job? If you think about it, many popular games have been map-based, turn-based, or both. On the one hand, we have simple low-tech board games like Don’t Get Angry and Monopoly; the other end of the spectrum includes the computer-based Panzer General and Civilization series as well as the stand-alone Alpha Centauri game.

Organizing children's parties is not an easy job: everything has to be perfectly planned and delivered. Otherwise, chaos happens. It’s up to the adults – more specifically, the party planners – to take care of everything and do it properly. Is there a better way to do this than to organize everything in a database? We don’t think so! Children’s parties vary a lot. Some are simple, like birthday parties that include just invitations, food (snacks, beverages, and a cake) and maybe a clown or a magician to entertain the kids.

Hungry but you don’t want to cook? Call up a restaurant, order your favorite meal, and read about a data model that can organize the whole process. Despite an abundance of “time-saving” technology, we seem to have less time to fulfill basic needs – such as eating. If we want to eat something but we don’t have the time (or the skills) to cook it ourselves, we can order food from a restaurant (i.