Relational Database Design and Modeling for Software Engineers
Ace your technical interviews by mastering relational database design with real-world case studies.
Course Overview
Feeling overwhelmed by database questions in technical interviews? You're not alone. Many students and professionals struggle with topics like normalization, ER diagrams, and relational schemas during interviews. These concepts can feel daunting without the right guidance and practice. This course is here to change that. Designed specifically for interview preparation, it breaks down complex topics into simple, digestible lessons. With hands-on projects and real-world examples, you'll not only understand the theory but also master its application. Start now and take the first step toward acing your next interview—your dream job is just a course away!
What you'll learn in Relational Database Design and Modeling for Software Engineers
- How to go from a vague requirement to a schema you can defend: data modeling levels, the modeling process itself, and the practices that keep it from going wrong.
- The degree of a relationship, unary, binary, and ternary, which is where most self-taught modellers first go astray.
- Every kind of key and the difference between them: super, candidate, primary, alternate, composite, and foreign, plus the integrity constraints that make them mean something.
- Normalization one form at a time, from first normal form through second, third, Boyce-Codd, and the higher forms, with the anomaly each one removes.
- 21 quiz questions across the chapters, so you find out whether a form actually stuck before you rely on it.
- Entity-relationship modeling in full: entities, attributes, relationships, cardinality, participation, weak entity types, and the attributes a relationship can carry.
- How to convert an ER diagram into the relational model mechanically, rather than redrawing the schema by intuition and hoping.
- Functional dependency and why it matters: the types, the inference rules, and how to compute the closure of an attribute set.
- Two full normalization exercises with worked solutions, because normalization is a skill you cannot acquire by reading definitions of it.
- Six complete case studies: a hospital, a hotel, a bank, Instagram, an e-commerce platform, and an online food delivery system.
Course Content
Fundamental Concepts
Entity-Relationship (ER) Data Modeling
What people say about our courses
About the Author
Arslan Ahmad
Industry Expertise & Leadership
Arslan Ahmad is the lead author of Relational Database Design and Modeling for Software Engineers. As the founder of Design Gurus and a former FAANG hiring manager, he has worked at industry giants like Facebook (now Meta) and Microsoft.
He has conducted hundreds of system design interviews, giving him unique insight into what top tech companies look for in candidates.
The course also incorporates expertise from senior engineers at Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Uber, ensuring you learn system design best practices from professionals who have built and scaled real-world systems.
500+
Interviews Conducted
10k+
Students Taught
Related Courses
$99.9
$75
FAQs
What is Relational Database Design and Modeling for Software Engineers?
It is a course on designing a relational schema properly: data modeling, entity-relationship diagrams, converting those diagrams into tables, functional dependencies, and normalization, finishing with six complete case studies where you watch a real system go from requirements to a normalized schema.
Who is this course for?
Software engineers who create tables regularly and have never been taught how, plus anyone preparing for an interview that includes schema design. That is a wider group than it sounds: many backend and low level design rounds ask you to model a domain, and a schema with the wrong keys is very visible to an interviewer.
How is this different from Grokking Database Fundamentals?
This course is about designing the schema: modeling, ER diagrams, keys, dependencies, and normal forms. Database Fundamentals is about how the engine underneath behaves: storage, indexing, transactions, concurrency, replication, and sharding. Design first, then internals, is the usual order, though they are independent enough to take in either.
Does it cover normalization in depth?
Yes, and it is the largest chapter in the course. First, second, third, and Boyce-Codd normal forms each get a lesson, followed by the higher forms, and then two full exercises with worked solutions. The exercises matter more than the definitions, since almost everybody can recite third normal form and far fewer can apply it to an unfamiliar table.
What are the case studies?
Six: a hospital management system, a hotel management system, a bank management system, Instagram, an e-commerce platform, and an online food delivery system. Each one runs the full route from requirements through an ER diagram to a relational schema, so the earlier chapters get used rather than remembered.
Do I need to know SQL before taking this?
Only lightly. You should know what a table, a row, and a join are. The course is about deciding which tables should exist and how they relate, not about writing queries against them, so a working knowledge of SQL is helpful context rather than a prerequisite.
Are there quizzes and exercises?
Yes. There are 21 quiz questions spread across the chapters, plus two full normalization exercises with worked solutions in the normalization chapter. The case studies function as extended exercises too, since you can attempt each schema before reading the one given.
Will this help in a system design interview?
It helps in the part of one that most candidates rush. Interviewers frequently ask you to sketch the data model, and being able to name your keys, justify a relationship, and say which normal form you are in and why you stopped there is a noticeable difference from drawing four boxes and moving on.
Is the course text-based or video-based?
Text-based, with a large number of diagrams. ER modeling is an inherently visual subject and the lessons lean on that heavily, which works better as diagrams you can study on a page than as diagrams that scroll past you.
Do I get a certificate of completion?
Yes. Design Gurus issues a certificate once you have completed the course, and you can share the link directly or add it to your LinkedIn profile.
