Flat-File Design
This type of design (sometimes known as the “throw-everything-into-one-big-table” design) has been in existence for many years and is common in databases that have been designed for implementation in nonrelational database-management systems. A flat-file design is fraught with problems, as you can see by examining the structure in Figure 14.1.
Figure 14.1. An example of a flat-file structure.
This diagram represents the structure of a single table. (Imagine how other tables within the database are structured!) You can readily see that this structure will inevitably cause problems with redundant data and inconsistent data ...
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