Chapter 2: Building a Database Model
In This Chapter
Finding and listening to interested parties
Building consensus
Building a relational model
Knowing the dangers of anomalies
Avoiding anomalies with normalization
Denormalizing with care
A successful database system must satisfy the needs of a diverse group of people. This group includes the folks who’ll actually enter data and retrieve results, but it also includes a host of others. People at various levels of management, for instance, may rely on reports generated by the system. People in other functional areas, such as sales or manufacturing, may use the products of the system, such as reports or bar code labels. The information technology (IT) people who set overall data processing standards for the organization may also weigh in on how the system is constructed and the form of the outputs it will produce. When designing a successful ...