Wednesday, 3 July 2013

Normalization and Denormalization

Normalization

Normalization is a series of steps followed to obtain a database design that allows for efficient access and storage of data. These steps reduce data redundancy and the chances of data becoming inconsistent.

Denormalization
Denormalization is the process of introducing redundancy into a table by incorporating data from a related table. Tables are usually denormalized to prevent expensive SQL join operations between them.
One should always normalize to third-normal form and only apply denormalization selectively as a last resort if performance problems are experienced. Remember that denormalizations is not free and introduces the following problem into the design:
§  More disk space is used as the same data is duplicated in more than one table
§  DML operations are more expensive as the same data must be maintained in more than one table

§  You run the risk that the data can get "out of sync"

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