THE CHARACTERISTICS OF FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD NORMAL FORMS
Normalization is the process of efficiently organizing data in a database. Ultimately, there
are two goals of the normalization process. The first is to remove the same data in more that one
table (redundant data). The second is to make sure data dependencies makes sense by having only
related data stored in the same table. The two ultimate goals highlighted are important as they help
reduce the amount of space a database consumes and ensure that data is logically stored.
NORMAL FORMS
The database community has established guidelines known as normal forms numbered
from 1NF to 5NF. The 1NF, 2NF and 3NF are occasionally used.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FIRST NORMAL FORM (1NF)
(a) Eliminate duplicate table from the column
(b) Create separate tables for each group of related data and identify each row by using a
unique column.
THE SECOND NORMAL FORM (2NF)
This addresses the concept of removing duplicate data as follows:
(a) Meet all the requirements of the first normal form
(b) Remove subsets of data that applies to multiple row of a table and place them in separate
tables.
(c) Through the use of foreign keys, they create a relationship between the new tables and their
predecessors.
THE THIRD NORMAL FORM (3NF)
(a) It meets the requirement of the second normal form
(b) Remove columns that are not dependent upon the primary key.
HOWDECOMPOSTITON IS USED AS PART OF THE PROCESS TO NORMALIZE A
DATABASE?
Since normalization is the process of redesigning the model to unbundle any overlapping
entities, by applying a linear programming of rules called the “normal forms” decomposition
cannot yield a loss of information (Technet, 2012).
REFERENCES
Access programmers. (2012). Normalizing the table design. Retrieved from
http://www.access-programmers.com/normalizing-the-table-design.aspx
Technet. (2012). Designing a normalized database. Retrieved from
http://www.tech-faq.com/database-normalization.html