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Minimal Modeling

minimalmodeling.substack.com

Making sense of your database. Click to read Minimal Modeling, by Alexey Makhotkin, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

Databases

’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
100 from 12 Dec 2020 to 23 Jul 2026
Posting
monthly (7 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://minimalmodeling.substack.com/feed

2026 7

  1. Tomorrow: the data model as an AI agent's missing context
  2. July 24: Minimal Modeling is exactly what an AI agent needs
  3. My take on data quality: Tier 2
  4. Applying Minimal Modeling to understand 5NF
  5. My take on data quality
  6. Subtypes and status-dependent data: pure relational approach
  7. Common SQL queries through a non-1NF lens

2025 6

  1. Documenting your data: WordPress case study, pt. 1
  2. Virtual 6NF
  3. Multi-join queries design: investigation
  4. Systematic design of multi-join GROUP BY queries
  5. Database Design Book released!
  6. Relational modeling challenge

2024 11

  1. Podcast guest appearance
  2. Historically, 4NF explanations are needlessly confusing
  3. Date's demon
  4. Minimal Modeling and GenAI
  5. Path dependence in relational design
  6. Speaking at the Data Vault User Group 2024 Conference
  7. Two draft chapters for the book
  8. Modeling legal guardianship
  9. "Documenting your database using Minimal Modeling" [video]
  10. Designing database for Google Calendar, drafts
  11. Minimal Modeling: processes and deliverables

2023 21

  1. Sentinel-free schemas: a thought experiment
  2. Designing database for Google Calendar, pt. I
  3. Many explanations of JOIN are wrong, and people get confused
  4. Book update
  5. An algebraic curiosity
  6. Data modeling brain dump, vol. I
  7. Currencies, countries, and languages: the well-known anchors
  8. The scope of the data modeling book
  9. Links and composite keys
  10. Database Modeling book — beta readers wanted
  11. More on false links
  12. Why Minimal Modeling has no 3-way links
  13. How to discover all the data sources, low-fuss way
  14. (3/3) "Relational Database Management: A Status Report" [Chris Date, 1983]
  15. (2/3) "Relational Database Management: A Status Report" [Chris Date, 1983]
  16. (1/3) “Relational Database Management: A Status Report” [Chris Date, 1983]
  17. How Minimal Modeling treats NULLs
  18. Minimal Modeling of Twitter.com, video recording
  19. [Today, 19:00 CEST] Zoom: Minimal Modeling of Twitter.com, without database
  20. Visual language and database visualization, pt. III
  21. [Jan 23, 19:00 CEST] Zoom: Minimal Modeling of Twitter.com, without database

2022 14

  1. Visualizing database using Minimal Modeling, pt. II
  2. How to visualize your database using Minimal Modeling
  3. How to grow as a database developer?
  4. End-to-end marketing analytics: Minimal Modeling case study
  5. WordPress 6: Minimal Modeling case study. Part II. [video]
  6. Early adopters: Minimal Modeling for self-service analytics
  7. WordPress 6: Minimal Modeling case study. Part I. [video]
  8. Why attributes should live outside the anchor
  9. A conceptual overview of Minimal Modeling [video]
  10. Minimal Modeling case study: Mokum
  11. Best ideas from H2 2021
  12. Migrations: migrating attributes, pt. V
  13. Organizational scalability and flexible database schemas (pt. II)
  14. The course: How to make sense of typical database

2021 40

  1. Flexible database schemas
  2. Migrations: migrating attributes, pt. IV
  3. Modeling pairs and tuples
  4. Migrations: migrating attributes, pt. III
  5. Migrations: migrating attributes, pt. II
  6. Migrations: migrating attributes, pt. I
  7. Handling time with supersecond resolution
  8. Migrations: Getting rid of anchors is awesome
  9. Migrations: Getting rid of links
  10. Migrations: getting rid of attributes
  11. Database modeling, stakeholders and their concerns
  12. Migrations: adding links
  13. Migrations: adding attributes
  14. Introduction to schema migrations
  15. Modeling mutual friendship
  16. Best ideas from the first 25 posts
  17. Extending booleans to enums
  18. Making sense of 1NF, pt. II
  19. Designing data access layer, pt. I
  20. A comprehensive guide to storing boolean values
  21. How to delete a lot of data, pt. II
  22. How to delete a lot of data
  23. Propagation delay
  24. UNION ALL, pt. II: polymorphic data
  25. VERTICAL JOIN, pt. I
  26. 240 tables and no documentation?
  27. Left joins, pt. II
  28. Many faces of left join
  29. Game theory in database design
  30. Persisting either/or values, or The uselessness of CHECK constraint
  31. Erasure
  32. Requirements change: migrating either/or data schema
  33. How else to store either/or data
  34. How to store either/or data in the database
  35. Structural and pure attributes
  36. Dependent and independent pieces of data
  37. Concatenability of either/or data
  38. Concatenability principle
  39. Database constraints, pt. II
  40. Database Constraints, pt. I

2020 1

  1. Data modeling