7.11. Summary
Database design is a huge concept, and one that has many excellent books dedicated to it as their sole subject. It is essentially impossible to get across every database design notion in just a chapter or two.
In this chapter, you have, however, gotten you off to a solid start. You've seen that data is considered normalized when you take it out to the third normal form. At that level, repetitive information has been eliminated and our data in entirely dependent on our key — in short, the data is dependent on: "the key, the whole key, and nothing but the key." You've seen that normalization is, however, not always the right answer — strategic de-normalization of our data can simplify the database for users and speed reporting performance. Finally, you've looked at some non-normalization-related concepts in our database design, plus how to make use of the diagramming tools to design our database.
In the next chapter, you will be taking a very close look at how SQL Server stores information and how to make the best use of indexes.
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