Lars Rönnbäck will be going to HAN (Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen) in the Netherlands to hold lectures on Anchor Modeling between June 28th and July 1st. For more information, visit the event registration page at HAN by clicking here. The week will open with a free guest lecture in which Lars will introduce Anchor Modeling, followed by a comparison of Anchor Modeling and Data Vault by Martijn Evers. The program for this day can be found by clicking here. Between June 30th and July 1st a two day crash course will be held in which participants will, among other things, build their own models and learn the details of Anchor Modeling. Applying for the course can be done by clicking here (with an early bird rebate until May 22nd). Note that all courses and lectures will be held in English. Below is the course description in English.
Crash Course in Anchor Modeling
Information is volatile. The frequency with which changes to both structure and content occur is rapidly increasing, and previous modeling techniques are not fit to handle this new and turbulent environment. Anchor Modeling is an agile modeling technique specifically designed for coping with information the evolve over time. In Anchor Modeling a model is not built to last – it is built to change – only then can it truly last in an ever changing environment.
Day 1: (basic modeling)
- motivations and philosophy for a new modeling technique
- a brief history of Anchor Modeling
- positioning Anchor Modeling against other techniques
- the Anchor Modeler, an online modeling tool
- the four basic building blocks
- information historization
- conceptual modeling
- naming convention
- modeling guidelines
- natural and surrogate keys
- physical implementation (tables, views)
Exercise (Anchor Modeler): building your own conceptual model
Day 2: (under the hood)
- XML representation
- generated SQL code
- performance implications
- hardware and database support
- indexing in Anchor Modeling
- table elimination (outer and foreign)
- three constructions for modeling time
- metadata
- simultaneous information, default values, multi-language
- evolving a model
- evolving a database without downtime
- loading data into a model
- zero update strategy
- benefits of Anchor Modeling
Exercise (Anchor Modeler + Microsoft SQL Server): implementing your model in a relational database
In preparation for the course, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (free with a 10GB database size limit) can by downloaded by clicking here.
