My initiation into the mysteries

My initiation into the mysteries of the database came unexpectedly today, with a request for a quick-and-dirty Microsoft Access job. I was delighted to discover that O’Reilly offers up database design principles as a sample chapter on their site. Of course, I started to get lost about 1/6 of the way in when the author talks about normal forms, but this totally abstract theory is just the stuff I love to smash my head on over and over and over until something breaks.