HTML5 and CSS3 All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Chapter 3

Normalizing Your Data

In This Chapter

Understanding why single-table databases are inadequate

Recognizing common data anomalies

Creating entity-relationship diagrams

Using MySQL Workbench to create data diagrams

Understanding the first three normal forms

Defining data relationships

Databases can be deceptive. Even though databases are pretty easy to create, beginners usually run into problems as soon as they start working with actual data.

Computer scientists (particularly a gentleman named E. F. Codd in the 1970s) have studied potential data problems and defined techniques for organizing data. This scheme is called data normalization. In this chapter, you discover why single-table databases rarely work for real-world data and how to create a well-defined data structure according to basic normalization rules.

On the website, I include a script called buildHero.sql that ...