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Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design Review by Edelmiro Fuentes
A very complete catalog of strategies for database maintenance
As I had never thought about data model maintenance in terms of "Refactoring", the title of this book was very appealing to me. Creating a data model from scratch on a development environment is a relatively easy thing to manage; updating an existing one on a production environment with a lot of dependencies, is certainly not.
Like accomplished taxonomists, Scott Ambler and Pramod Sadalage elaborated an exhaustive catalog where they identified, named, and classified most (if not all) of the transformations that can be applied, not only to the database itself (e.g. Drop Column, Rename View, Split Table) but also to the data (e.g. Apply Standard Codes, Introduce Default Value, Introduce Common Format) and to the methods (e.g. Add Parameter, Rename Method, Remove Middle Man).
Each transformation is clearly explained together with a suggested strategy for rolling-it out into production. References on the inside cover serve as an index to easily locate each particular refactoring and transformation.
This book should certainly be on the bookshelf of any person responsible for maintaining a database.