Summary

We opened this chapter with a short discussion on why you should be concerned with having sound structures in your database. You learned that poorly designed tables can cause numerous problems, not the least of which concern data integrity.

Next we discussed fine-tuning the fields in each table. You learned that giving your fields good names is very important because it ensures that each name is meaningful and actually helps you to find hidden problems with the field structure itself. You now know how to fine-tune your field structures by ensuring they conform to a few simple rules. These rules deal with issues such as guaranteeing that each field represents a single characteristic of the table’s subject, contains only a single value, ...

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