Comment by bob1029

This paper was career changing for me.

Chapter 9 is effectively the original concept for our business rules engine today. We use SQLite and C# UDFs as the actual foundation.

Using a proper relational model and SQL queries for all the things means that domain experts can directly contribute. It also makes it feasible to turn your domain experts into internal customers of your developers. For B2B products, this can be make or break.

Building an actual business around this kind of thing is very hazardous in my experience. Unless you are completely certain that you have the schema figured out, this promising foundation converts to quicksand.

Using higher normal forms is one way to reduce the consequence of screwing up domain modeling, but you still really have to know the relational guts of the business one way or another.

One design-time trick is to get all stakeholders to compose their ideal schema in something like excel and have them fill in some sample data. Showing them an example of one of these for a different domain is a powerful lesson in my experience.