Introduction

It is very difficult to change the application design once the development process begins.

Often the primary aim of a software and data architect is to make things work, but designing applications for optimal performance is not a marginal aspect, many applications need to meet specific timing requirements to be useful.

In this chapter, we will investigate some aspects to keep in mind when designing an application and some tips on specific database features, which can help us in this task.

We will start inspecting the database connection phase, and then move on to general use of SQL statements in our applications for performance enhancement.

Recipes on useful database objects will follow, and the chapter will close with schema denormalization and dynamic SQL.