Oracle Essentials: Oracle9i, Oracle8i and Oracle8, Second Edition
by Rick Greenwald, Robert Stackowiak, Jonathan Stern
Data Design
Tables and columns present a logical view of the data in a relational database. The flexibility of a relational database gives you many options for grouping the atomic pieces of data, represented by the columns, into a set of tables. To use Oracle effectively, you must understand and follow some firmly established principles of database design.
The topic of database design is vast and deep: we won’t even pretend to offer more than a cursory overview. For more information, we recommend the book Oracle Design by Dave Ensor and Ian Stevenson (see Appendix B for details).
When E. F. Codd created the concept of a relational database in the 1960s, he also began work on the concept of normalized data design. The theory behind normalized data design is pretty straightforward: a table should contain only the information that’s directly related to the key value of the table. The process of assembling these logical units of information is called normalization of the database design.
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