Data persistence has a way of sneaking up on developers. You start out with a simple, straightforward database that can functionally hold the data you’re working with and the data you need to work with later. But as your needs change, you start to modify it here and there, until it becomes a brittle tangle of tables and keys and indexes. You need something more dynamic, but you need to retain the ability to retrieve your persistent data. Now, you’re miles from where you started, and staring down the possibility of having to adopt a whole new system. That persistent data is fundamental to nearly any operation that utilizes database management systems (DBMS), but while the growth of dynamic data has led to sophisticated and reliable new relational management systems, real-world techniques for optimal data storage and retrieval have sometimes been lost in the shuffle. With that in mind, we’ve put together a new edition of our comprehensive DZone Guide to Data Persistence.