Beginning Database Design: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

CHAPTER 8

Normalization

We are doing pretty well at designing a database. So far, you have learned how use cases and a data model can help you understand many of the complexities of the problem you are trying to represent. In the previous chapter, you saw how to represent the main parts of the data model in a relational database. To recap:

• Each class is represented by a table.
• Each attribute is represented by a field with a datatype and possible constraints.
• Each object becomes a row in a table.
• For each table, we determine a primary key, which is a field(s) that uniquely identifies each row.
• We use the primary key field(s) to represent relationships ...