Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 DBA Survival Guide, Second Edition

Summary

Important notes to remember when designing databases are

• The following are the three forms of normalization:

  • 1st normal form— No repeating groups.

  • 2nd normal form— No nonkey attributes depend on a portion of the primary key.

  • 3rd normal form— No attributes depend on other nonkey attributes.

• Strive for 3rd normal form to maximize data consistency and minimize update anomalies.

• When a significant number of tables must be joined to process a query, you might want to selectively denormalize the database to improve performance.