Normalizing a Database

Normalization is a process of reducing redundancies of data in a database. In addition to data, names, object names, and forms are also normalized in a database.

The Raw Database

A database that is not normalized may include data that is contained in one or more different tables for no apparent reason. This could be bad for security reasons, disk space usage, speed of queries, efficiency of database updates, and, maybe most importantly, data integrity. A database before normalization is one that has not been broken down logically into smaller, more manageable tables. Figure 4.1 illustrates the database used for this book before it was normalized.

Figure 4.1. The raw database.

Logical Database Design

Any database ...

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