Database Normalization
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Southern New Hampshire University *
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Apr 3, 2024
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Uploaded by kodykearns
5-2 Short Paper: Database Normalization
1
Cody Kearns
SNHU
IT 650 Principles of Database Design
March 31, 2024
5-2 Short Paper: Database Normalization
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Databases are typically structured in a way to be easy to follow for end-users. Depending
on the needs of a company, having a more organized layout can make executing tasks faster.
Typically there are two ways to structure them, by the way of normalization and
denormalization. Normalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database. There
are two goals of the normalization process: eliminating redundant data (for example, storing the
same data in more than one table) and ensuring data dependencies make sense (only storing
related data in a table) (Chapple, 2023).
We can further expand upon this concept by describing the guidelines that can be
followed to ensure that the database is normalized. The first form eliminates duplicate columns
from the same table as well as creating separate tables for similar groups of data. The second
form cleans up the rows and creates relationships between them and the foreign keys. A relation
is in 4NF if it has no multivalued dependencies (Chapple, 2023).
The other kind of formatting, denormalization takes an almost opposite approach.
Denormalization is a database optimization technique in which we add redundant data to one or
more tables. This can help us avoid costly joins in a relational database. Note that
denormalization does not mean ‘reversing normalization’ or ‘not to normalize’. It is an
optimization technique that is applied after normalization (GeeksforGeeks, 2023). From the
article, it also gives some advantages of denormalization that I hadn’t considered. With a
denormalization approach, there are less tables to move through thus more likely to have less
bugs. Also makes reading the data easier as well as maintenance upkeep. Plus the queries that are
done would be more straightforward and thus take less time to execute and analyze. Overall,
5-2 Short Paper: Database Normalization
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there are times where you would want to use this approach as well as normalization to create the
database.
With this in mind, it would make sense, at least to a certain degree, to incorporate a bit of
denormalization in the Westlake database due to the fact that there may be a few different queries
that need to be run. These queries would include how many patients have what level of
depression, correlations between the new drug versus Prozac. It would make looking for certain
information easier, like doctors notes and recommendations. I do think though by focusing more
on normalization, the database will be organized for high level analysis, thus making it more
professional. Having these requirements in place will make the structure easy to follow which
would meet the needs of Westlake.
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5-2 Short Paper: Database Normalization
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References
Chapple, M. (2022, February 23).
The basics of database normalization
. Lifewire.
https://www.lifewire.com/database-normalization-basics-1019735
GfG. (2023, May 8). Denormalization in databases. GeeksforGeeks.
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/denormalization-in-databases/