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Database Design for Mere Mortals™: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition
book

Database Design for Mere Mortals™: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition

by Michael J. Hernandez
March 2003
Beginner
672 pages
14h
English
Addison-Wesley Professional
Content preview from Database Design for Mere Mortals™: A Hands-On Guide to Relational Database Design, Second Edition

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.

image

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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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0201752840Purchase book