How can an object-oriented programmer get his/her head around database-driven programming?

Question

I have been programming in C# and Java for a little over a year and have a decent grasp of object oriented programming, but my new side project requires a database-driven model.

Answer 1

The big question: how can you get your head around it? It just takes practice. You try implementing a database design, run into problems with your design, you refactor and remember for next time what worked and what didn't.

To answer your specific questions... this is a little bit of opinion thrown in, as in "how I would do it", not taking into account performance needs and such. I always start fully normalized and go from there based on real-world testing:

Table Event
EventID
Title
StartDateTime
EndDateTime

Table ShiftEvent
ShiftEventID
EventID
ShiftSpecificProperty1

...

Table Product
ProductID
Name

Table Category
CategoryID
Name

Table CategoryProduct
CategoryID
ProductID

Also reiterating what Pierre said - an ORM tool like Hibernate makes dealing with the friction between relational structures and OO structures much nicer.