Database Design: Know It All

Chapter 6. Normalization

Given any pool of entities and attributes, there are a number of ways you can group them into relations. In this chapter, you will be introduced to the process of normalization, through which you create relations that avoid most of the problems that arise from bad relational design.

There are at least two ways to approach normalization. The first is to work from an entity–relationship (ER) diagram. If the diagram is drawn correctly, then there are some simple rules you can use to translate it into relations that will avoid most relational design problems. The drawback to this approach is that it can be difficult to determine whether your design is correct. The second approach is to use the theoretical concepts behind ...