Want to make sure your database loses data, duplicates records, and can only handle 5 transactions a minute? Want to make your application developers curse you, your sysadmin hate you, and get yourself fired without a reference? These ten database design techniques will set you on the road to downtime perdition and maintenance hell.

Is database normalization just for database geeks in ivory towers? Is it counter to performance? Or is it critical to make sure that your database application works and doesn't crash?

And what the heck is normalization really, anyway?

Career database geek Josh Berkus will show in terms directly relevant to application developers why normalization is important for performance, maintainability, accuracy, and avoiding downtime. He'll explain what normalization is (and what it isn't) and demonstrate some ways to measure it.