Huffman’s Fleet Truck Maintenance Database
TEAM C
Diosa Allen, Tim Breen, Danny Finein, Klay Kohl, Justin Madison
DBM/380
November 2, 2014
Mario Missakian
Principles of Normalization
In a time of budgets and demands for accountability, designing a normalized database structure meant to last, was the first step when building Huffman’s Fleet Truck Maintenance database. Organization is made easy through the use of computers and electronic filing systems, the process of normalization leads to a flexible, efficient, maintainable database with “correctly structured relations” (Carpenter, 2008). We'll examine the major principles and importance of normalization, and then take a look at some powerful optimization and normalization techniques used for this project.
Simply put, normalization is a formal process for determining which fields belong in which tables in a relational database. Normalization follows a set of rules worked out at the time relational databases were born and ensures that you get the benefits relational databases offer. A normalized relational database provides several benefits:
Elimination of redundant data storage.
Close modeling of real world entities, processes, and their relationships.
Structuring of data so that the model is flexible.
The principles of normalization are described in a series of progressively stricter normal forms. First normal form (1NF) is the easiest to satisfy, second normal form (2NF), more difficult, and so on (Wang, T.J., Du, H., Lehmann, C. M. 2010).
- The First normal form is easy to understand and apply: A table is in first normal form if it contains no repeating groups. When you have more than one field storing the same kind of information in a single table, you have a repeating group.
- The second normal form helps identify when you've combined two tables into one. Second normal form depends on the concepts of...