If you’re developing games and use a database to keep track of things, you’ll be doing yourself some good by reading the article MMP Database Mini-Cookbook: A Half Dozen Recipes To Aid Development by Jay Lee, published yesterday (9/22/04) on Gamasutra. The author provides six tips on designing your database schema to handle multiple shards/servers, localization, class to database relationships, and more.
Lee’s other Gamasutra article, published about a year prior, is equally valuable. Relational Database Guidelines For MMOGs gives some insight into naming standards and basic database best practices that may not be evident to all database developers. Hats off to Lee for two good articles on database design and development in general – and for aiming it at the game development market!