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Learn the process of database normalization, which is the process of eliminating redundant or repeating data in a database.
There are hundreds of sites that go into normalization to varying degrees.
Some of the ones we like are:
Wikipedia: Database Normalization
Study Tonight: Database Normalization
Essential SQL: Database Normalization
Database designers go through a great deal
of planning to achieve optimal storage and
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performance while generating
the desired context for
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the data stored in database tables.
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Designing a relational database in
this manner is called normalization.
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During the process of normalization,
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the database schema designer is thinking
about the data that is important to
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their business and
how best to fit that in to tables.
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They're looking for places where the data
would repeat and what values depend on
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one another so that they can group
certain things together logically.
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Take for
instance this very simple spreadsheet.
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Everything is lumped together
in one large table or dataset.
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It's easy for a human to read like
this but as you add more rows and
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columns, it would get more and
more difficult to read and maintain.
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Let's briefly look at it through
the eyes of a database designer.
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Upon first glance,
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the database designer would probably
notice there are three main data groups.
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Customer, car and sale.
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They would be broken apart
into separate tables.
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They might also notice within car there
is a chance to have repeating makes.
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So, they would make that separate as well.
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This separation is called normalization.
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As the normalization process
comes to completion,
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the designer will end up with a data model
that might look something like this.
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This is a crude representation
of the normalization process.
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We'll go into this into a little
more detail in the next video.
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