This is a very useful rule to use when building an Entity Relationship Diagram.

No crows were hurt during the construction of this diagram.
This is a very useful rule to use when building an Entity Relationship Diagram.

No crows were hurt during the construction of this diagram.
John, do you mind if I link to this article in the book I’m co-authoring with Steve Hoberman?
I loved the TDAN article. My wife just wrote an article on breed-able animals in Second Life and other virtual worlds. Her fictional company was “Cuddly Crows” and she had a graphic of the expansion of a company and the failure (dead crows at the bottom of a pyramid).
Sounds like a really disorganised data model!
Ever heard the rural saying about crows and rooks?
“If you see one rook, that be a crow. If you see lots of crows, them be rooks.”
You’d only have one crow (or perhaps two) in a data model; if there’s more than one, they must be rooks!