Apress - Applied Mathematics For Database Professionals

Introduction

This book will not try to change your attitude towards mathematics, which can be anywhere between hate and love. The sole objective of this book is to show you how you can use mathematics in your life as a database professional, and how mathematics can help you solve certain problems. We, the authors, are convinced that familiarity with the areas of mathematics that will be presented in this book, and on which the relational model of data is based, is a strong prerequisite for anybody who aims to be professionally involved with databases. This book tries to fill a space that is not yet covered by the many books on databases that are already available. In Part 1, we cover just the part of mathematics that is useful for the practice of the database professional; the mathematical theory covered in this part is linked to the practice in Parts 2 (specifying database designs) and 3 (implementing database designs). One thing is for sure: mathematics forces you to think clearly and precisely, and then to write things down as formally and precisely as possible. This is because the language of mathematics is both formal and rich in expressive power. Natural languages are rich in expressive power but are highly informal; on the other hand, programming languages are formal but typically have much less expressive power than mathematics.