Advantages and Disadvantages of Normalization
advantages and disadvantages of normalization. The process of normalization brings about organization to the database that it is applied to. Normalization makes everyone’s job easier due to the fact that it gets rid of as much useless data as possible. Repeated data is processed and simplified into single data. Repeated data, for example such as having someone named JOHN DOE in one table and the same person’s name JOHNNY M. DOE in another table. Modifying a table with as little data as possible is much easier than modifying a huge table with all the information that the database has. Normalization breaks the database down into smaller tables making it much easier for database users and administrators to save disk space and simplify their structures of data. Throughout the process of normalization, security also becomes easier to control. The database administrator can determine which users have access to certain tables.
Another advantage of normalization is that it provides indexing. Indexing speeds up the access of data, increase delete, update, and insert performance. Normalization also minimizes modification anomalies. Modification anomalies can occur when the data is deleted, inserted, or updated, and the data is lost in other ways such as hardware being damaged or stolen. In addition, normalization helps with the reduction of table and row size. Creating primary and foreign key constraints will reduce the number of empty or null values in columns and reduces the overall size of the database. Normalization has yet another great advantage, referential integrity. Referential Integrity means that one column
Data 3
in a table has to relate to a column in another table. It is the ability to take important information or relate data from one table to another through a similar attribute. For example, in order for an employee to have a record in the PAY_TBL table, that employee would have to have a record in the EMPLOYEE_TBL table. Referential Integrity
Another advantage of normalization is that it provides indexing. Indexing speeds up the access of data, increase delete, update, and insert performance. Normalization also minimizes modification anomalies. Modification anomalies can occur when the data is deleted, inserted, or updated, and the data is lost in other ways such as hardware being damaged or stolen. In addition, normalization helps with the reduction of table and row size. Creating primary and foreign key constraints will reduce the number of empty or null values in columns and reduces the overall size of the database. Normalization has yet another great advantage, referential integrity. Referential Integrity means that one column
Data 3
in a table has to relate to a column in another table. It is the ability to take important information or relate data from one table to another through a similar attribute. For example, in order for an employee to have a record in the PAY_TBL table, that employee would have to have a record in the EMPLOYEE_TBL table. Referential Integrity
References: Agile data. (2007). A Database Best Practice. Retrieved January 30, 2008 from http://www.agiledata.org/ Server Watch. (2007). Database Normalization. Retrieved January 31, 2008 from http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php Tech Trax. (2007). Normalizing Access Data. Retrieved January 31, 2008 from http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009