The article discusses seven essential database schema best practices that help make your data more tractable and usable. These include upfront planning, data normalization, entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs), data standardization, naming conventions, security by design, and schema documentation. Good schema design requires a significant investment of time and expertise but is crucial for understanding the underlying data model and ensuring data integrity. Following these best practices can help analysts build dashboards, reports, and data models more effectively.