After being distracted by preparing a certain conference for quite some time, I finally found the time to have a look at Steve Hoberman’s latest book, The Rosedata Stone: Achieving a Common Business Language using the Business Terms Model. 

It’s hard to not know Steve when you’re working in our field but in case you’ve never heard of him, Steve Hoberman has written a significant number of data modeling books over the years, trained literally thousands of people in data modeling and been the mastermind behind the Data Modeling Zone series of conferences. Yours truly spoke at Data Modeling Zone Europe in Stuttgart last year (slides here) and is scheduled to appear at Data Modeling Zone in Antwerp next year as well.

Now, what is a Rosedata stone, exactly? 

Rosedata Stone book cover

Money Quote: “There’s a saying among older programmers: ‘I can meet any deadline you set for me, as long as the software doesn’t have to work properly.’”

While he’s probably not that famous in data circles, every self-respecting programmer knows “Uncle Bob” Martin. He’s been an Extreme Programming advocate for decades, he was one of the people behind the Agile Manifesto and over the past decade or so, he wrote a series of books prefixed with the word “Clean”: Clean Code, The Clean Coder, Clean Architecture and now Clean Agile. 

In Clean Agile, Martin retells the origin story of the Agile movement, explains the reasons why it was started and gives an overview of the business, team and technical practices he deems important. Obviously, the book has been born out of frustration with what people have called the Agile-Industrial Complex or even Cargo-Cult Agile, giving it a “get off my lawn” vibe at times.

Robert C. Martin (2015)

 By Tim-bezhashvyly [CC-BY-SA], via Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday, the 6th of February, there will be another round of Data Modeling & Tapas at the Data Modeling Meetup Munich (DM3).

This time, we’ll have two special guests: Snowflake data architect John Ryan and German data vault expert Torsten Glunde. Both will also speak at the Knowledge Gap conference in May.

The meetup will begin at 6:30 PM and take place at EATapaS, Trappentreustr. 23,  Munich.

Please register via Meetup or use the Contact form.

Spanish tapas

By Toben [CC BY-SA], via Wikimedia Commons

This exercise has been created for (and tried out successfully at) the Data Modeling Meetup Munich (DM3).

It works best with small groups (at least 3, not more than 6 people). If possible, split your team in multiple groups (at least 2, not more than 4). Then, you can discuss and compare the results from the different groups afterwards.

Carsharing in Munich

By Henning Schlottmann [CC BY-SA], via Wikimedia Commons

This exercise has been created for (and tried out successfully at) the Data Modeling Meetup Munich (DM3).

It works best with small groups (at least 3, not more than 6 people). If possible, split your team in multiple groups (at least 2, not more than 4). Then, you can discuss and compare the results from the different groups afterwards.

Airbus A319

By Pedro Aragão [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons