About Programming: Normalizing your Database, Add Business Days

Programming In the Spotlight | More Topics | Declaration |   from Angela Bradley Hello Programmers! This week's issue of the About.com programming newsletter features articles about normalizing your database, optional method perimeters with hatches in Ruby, and adding business days to a date in JavaScript. We also take a look at Java declaration statements. Have a great week, and s super holiday weekend!   In the Spotlight Normalizing Your Database If you've been working with databases for a while, chances are you've heard the term normalization. Perhaps someone's asked you "Is that database normalized?" or "Is that in BCNF?" All too often, the reply is "Uh, yeah." Normalization is often brushed aside as a luxury that only academics have time for. However, knowing the principles of normalization and applying them to your daily database design tasks really isn't all that complicated and it could drastically improve the performance of your DBMS.              More Topics Converting bytes to str in Python 3.0 via Functions Python Joomla Review PHP / MySQL The Mother of all Flame Wars - Mono! C / C++ / C# Web Design Software Pick of the Week: W3C Validation Service Web Design/HTML Netbeans v6.7 Released Java AutoTest: A LINQ to XML Example System Visual Basic Using Dates as Variables Python Optional Method Parameters with Hashes Ruby provides a mechanism for optional method parameters. However, this mechanism is not very flexible. You cannot pass them by name, out of order, or omit some of the parameters. This article outlines how you can use hashes to emulate keyword or named parameters. This gets around these limitations with a little Ruby magic and just a little extra syntax.   Add Business Days to a Date You dont need a complicated loop to be able to skip over the weekends when adding or subtracting business days. A half dozen lines of code in a method added to your existing date objects will quickly and efficiently add the functionality without needing a loop.     Sponsored Links   Declaration Statement Declaration Statement A declaration statement is used to declare a variable by specifying its data type and name. For example, the following three declaration statements declare int, boolean and String variables: int number; boolean isFinished; String welcomeMessage; In addition to the data type and name, a declaration statement can initialize the variable with a value Read more...   Cats Photo Quiz Boy Cat or Girl -- Can You Figure it Out? Think you can tell a boy cat from a girl cat just by looking at a photo? It may not be as easy as you think: even gender-based color patterns can be misleading. Click here to take the quiz. Programming Ads C# Example C# Database C# Tutorials C# Class Learn C# Advertisement     Visit Related About GuideSites: C/C++ Databases Delphi Programming Focus on Java Focus on JavaScript HTML/XML Perl/PHP Visual Basic   Search About      Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About Programming newsletter as johnson398@GMAIL.COM. If you wish to change or remove your email address, please visit: http://www.about.com/nl/usgs.htm?nl=programsl&e=johnson398@GMAIL.COM About respects your privacy. Our Privacy Policy. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.