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Common Issues with Databases

Common Issues with Databases

Learn about the different types of issues that arise whendealing with databases.

If we can’t trust our data, we can’t trust our program. Issues with data correctness can go unnoticed for a long time, popping up unexpectedly to pollute the user experience, raise doubt about the web application, or crash a server process. This is especially true as the data gets more complicated and as the points of contact with the data increase. The best practice for developing a new application is to enforce data integrity constraints from the beginning and re-run total data checks periodically. Three broad categories to watch for are:

  • Type violations
  • Invalid semantics
  • Broken cross-references

Type violations

The data types on which databases are built prevent the coarsest kinds of type violations, such as storing a number where a string is expected. In general, it is important to ...