Tim Bray's 3 Mobile Software Rules may just be a case of Maslow's "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like nail" to me -- but the simple designs you would get if follow Tim's rules echo Unix/Linux design to me -- no complications (no separate Exit routines & loose interconnections & few decorations). Whether you are in .NET like I am on workdays, on the bleeding edge of HA web design, or down to the metal in embedded software design, simple designs always seem to end up working…

Top 10 Mistakes When Building and Maintaining a Database is a good overview of what not to do when creating a database.

• The article is SQL Server-centric; and
• Mistake #4, "Use of Adhoc Queries", seems to be true only when you have a large, heterogenous development staff (like 10+ developers). Smaller development groups don't seem to suffer from allowing ad hoc queries by d…