Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Database normalization is the process of structuring a relational database accordance with a series of so-called normal forms in order to reduce data redundancy and improve data integrity. It was first proposed by British computer scientist Edgar F. Codd as part of his relational model .
Normalization (to first normal form) is a process where attributes with non-simple domains are extracted to separate stand-alone relations. The extracted relations are amended with foreign keys referring to the primary key of the relation which contained it. The process can be applied recursively to non-simple domains nested in multiple levels. [4]
In the field of relational database design, normalization is a systematic way of ensuring that a database structure is suitable for general-purpose querying and free of certain undesirable characteristics—insertion, update, and deletion anomalies that could lead to loss of data integrity.
Normalization splits up data to avoid redundancy (duplication) by moving commonly repeating groups of data into new tables. Normalization therefore tends to increase the number of tables that need to be joined in order to perform a given query, but reduces the space required to hold the data and the number of places where it needs to be updated if the data changes.
A database relation (e.g. a database table) is said to meet third normal form standards if all the attributes (e.g. database columns) are functionally dependent on solely a key, except the case of functional dependency whose right hand side is a prime attribute (an attribute which is strictly included into some key).
In computer science, canonicalization (sometimes standardization or normalization) is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a "standard", "normal", or canonical form.
Data cleansing may also involve harmonization (or normalization) of data, which is the process of bringing together data of "varying file formats, naming conventions, and columns", [2] and transforming it into one cohesive data set; a simple example is the expansion of abbreviations ("st, rd, etc." to "street, road, etcetera").
The sixth normal form is currently as of 2009 being used in some data warehouses where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, [9] for example using anchor modeling.Although using 6NF leads to an explosion of tables, modern databases can prune the tables from select queries (using a process called 'table elimination' - so that a query can be solved without even reading some of the tables that the ...