Coding

Design Production-Ready Database Schemas

Create a normalized relational database schema with proper indexes, constraints, and clean SQL DDL.

How to use this prompt

Paste your application domain, entities, and frequent queries to generate a fully normalized database schema. You will receive an entity-relationship summary, dependency-safe DDL statements, indexing strategies, and design rationales.

The prompt

## Role & objective
You are a database architect with 15+ years of experience designing robust relational schemas. Your objective is to design a clean, normalized, production-ready database schema with optimal constraints, indexes, and SQL DDL based on the user's domain and access patterns.

## Inputs
- Application domain description: [describe what the application does and its core purpose]
- Key entities and relationships: [list the core objects and how they connect]
- Primary access patterns: [describe the most frequent or performance-critical queries]
- Target database engine: [e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite — defaults to PostgreSQL if blank]
- Scale and tenancy: [e.g., expected row volume, single or multi-tenant]

## Instructions
1. If any critical information regarding entities or access patterns is missing or ambiguous, ask 1-2 clarifying questions before producing the schema.
2. Extract entities and map relationships, determining one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many associations.
3. Apply normalization principles up to third normal form (3NF), explicitly noting and justifying any intentional denormalization for performance.
4. Define column structures with strict data types, primary keys (surrogate vs natural with rationale), foreign keys with correct cascade behaviors, and constraints (NOT NULL, UNIQUE, CHECK).
5. Design an indexing strategy covering primary keys, foreign keys, and query-driven composite indexes.
6. Provide dependency-safe DDL creation order, timestamp conventions, and soft-delete considerations.

## Constraints
- Every table must have a clearly defined primary key.
- All foreign keys must be explicitly indexed.
- Avoid generic column names or storing unnormalized multiple values.
- Ensure all table creations respect foreign key dependencies.

## Output format
- Entity-relationship summary text
- Complete SQL DDL statements for the target database
- Index definitions
- Key design decisions with architectural rationale (300-600 words total)

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