As developers, the longer we develop the more attached we become to certain methods of organizing information. In saying that, I mean my eye twitches when I work on a project that lacks a clean organized backend to the solution. As a team at Cross IT we do a great job of adhering to common programming practices between all projects so that one developer can work on any project that we have created.
Now this article could go on forever if we discussed naming conventions and why we utilize what we utilize; but I do want to talk about how we use the Anchor-Buoy method. The idea behind this is that the main table occurrence is always anchored on the left with any relationships branching out to the right. With this structure/method, any new table occurrence group can be added to the graph infinitely downward, which makes browsing the table occurrence groups as easy as scrolling up and down. Some developers utilize a less organized approach, and their relationship graphs look much more like a spider web. (This is not the miracle of a new spider web with a fresh morning dew on it, but something from the movie Arachnophobia.)
My personal preference isn’t favoring one method over another, as much as it is about being organized and uniform throughout the solution. Sometimes we as developers forget that it may not be only us or our team(s) who are looking at the backend structure, and at times fail to make the backend as easy to follow as the front end. By spending the extra time in making the backend as clean and friendly as the front end for our customers, this helps developers follow the design and intended use of an application; which benefits not only ourselves but other people down the road.
