I've never come across a great book of relational models specific to domains. My favorite general db book is Database Systems: The Complete Book (DS:CB), by He

I've never come across a great book of relational models specific to domains. My favorite general db book is Database Systems: The Complete Book (DS:CB), by Hector Garcia-Molina, Jeff Ullman, and Jennifer Widom. This is a good book for learning about relational modeling and how to normalize a model so that your eventual schema has as few dependencies between entities as possible. I taught an introductory class where the required (by the department) textbook was Foundations of Database Systems by Elmasri. It's definitely not my favorite book, but if you skim chapter 3 on entity-relational modeling and then chapter 9 on converting an entity-relational model to a relational model suitable for an RDBMs, that is a useful starting place. When I was teaching the class, I often had to go back to the Garcia-Molina,Ullman, Widom book for simple and clear language around concepts for my lectures. I'll second the recommendation for Joe Celko's books for general SQL programming.