
1.4 Why Physical Design Is Hard 11
As part of the physical design, the global schema can sometimes be refined in limited
ways to reflect processing (query and transaction) requirements if there are obvious large
gains to be made in efficiency. This is called denormalization. It consists of selecting dom-
inant processes on the basis of high frequency, high volume, or explicit priority; defining
simple extensions to tables that will improve query performance; evaluating total cost for
query, update, and storage; and considering the side effects, such as possible loss of integ-
rity. Details are given in Chapter 15.
1.4 Why Physical Design Is Hard
Physical ...