Running Head: Normalization, Relationships, and Constraints 1

Normalization, Relationships, and Constraints

LaRon Walker

Master of Information Technology and Internet Security

February, 2010

When designing databases with tables in mind, one must always consider Normalization.

Normalization analyses how data is organized into tables, and when it comes to stored procedures and

queries, this can directly affect performance, which is also a top consideration in database design. This

decision can exponentially affect the overall success of a database. Normalization reduces data

redundancy, which helps maintain storage problems. This also helps with problems associated with

duplicate query redundancy errors with dynamic table variables, reducing the load placed on server

processers. As this issue replicates through the database, unnecessary storage is being wasted on this

as well. With dynamic variables, this can cause other issues where incorrect information is being passed

due to caching and syncing integrity inconsistency errors. With this in mind, the less redundancy a data

structure has, the less overall problems. Consistency equals efficiency. This tactic is one of the few that

can be applied to any database to improve its stability, performance and reliability. By this, other

caching and load problems may also be reduced or resolved. A duplicate of anything can directly affect

the performance of any application when it comes to databases, and as these problems replicate, the

results can cause other issues including a full database failure.

Normalization is a strategy that consists of granularly breaking down a group of information and

organizing its data to isolate their commonalities into different packages while maintaining a direct link

to the main entity. Below is the comparison of broken down to then third normal form:

Orders Table that stores all information:

Running Head: Normalization, Relationships, and Constraints 2

Orders_All_Info

 Order_id
 Order_date
 Order_total_price
 Customer_id
 Customer_name
 Customer_address
 Customer_city
 Customer_state
 Item_id
 Item_description
 Item_qty
 Item_price
 Item_total_price

Table Reduced to third normal form

Table = Orders

 Order_id
 Customer_id
 Item_id
 Order_date
 Order_total_price
Running Head: Normalization, Relationships, and Constraints 3

Table = Customers

 Customer_id
 Customer_name
 Customer_address
 Customer_city
 Customer_state

Table = Items

 Item_id
 Item_description
 Item_qty
 Item_price
 Item_total_price
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References

Hoffer, J., Prescott, M., Topi, H. (2009). MODERN DATABASE MANAGEMENT (9th ed.). Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Murach,, J., Syverson, B. (2008). Murach’s SQL Server 2008 for developers. Printed in the United States
of America: Mike Murach & Associates, Inc