There is set of rules that have been established to aid in the design of tables that are meant to be connected through relationships. This set of rules is known as Normalization.
Benefits of normalizing your database include:
- Avoiding repetitive entries
- Reducing required storage space
- Preventing the need to restructure existing tables to accommodate new data.
- Increased speed and flexibility of queries, sorts, and summaries.
Following are the three normal forms:
First Normal Form
For a table to be in first normal form, data must be broken up into the smallest un possible.In addition to breaking data up into the smallest meaningful values, tables first normal form should not contain repetitions groups of fields.
Second Normal form
The second normal form states that each field in a multiple field primary keytable must be directly related to the entire primary key. Or in other words,each non-key field should be a fact about all the fields in the primary key.
Third normal form
A non-key field should not depend on other Non-key field.