Data and
Information
List of employees and their respective departments
Library Book Collection
List of employees and their respective departments
What IF?
• You need to make changes to an employee’s
name?
• You need to change the name of a department
form IT to IT-MIS?
• You need to remove a department in the list?
Library Book Collection
What IF?
• You need to make changes to an
author’s name?
• You need to change the Title of a
book?
Disadvantages of Redundant
Field/Columns
•Prone to Errors
•Tedious Repetition of the same
items
•Bulky and Difficult to manage
So, Break down Tables with Redundant Fields
Redundant Field/Columns
List of employees and their respective departments
Remove the Redundant Fields
Redundant Field/Columns
Library Book Collection
Remove the
Redundant Fields
Remove
the
redundant
field(s)
DEPARTMENT
Create
a separate table
for department
data
EMPLOYEE
NORMALIZED
or SIMPLIFIED
TABLES
DEPARTMENT
EMP_DEPT
The new
tables are
now
Normalized.
Library Book Collection
Remove
Step 1 Redundant Fields
and create a
separate table for
them
Step 2 AUTHORS
Create a new
table for the
AUTHORS data
Step 3 Create the relationship/link
AUTHORS
Add a new field which makes each record unique
(ex. IDNo, codeNo, recNo, AuthorID)
NORMALIZED AUTHORS
or SIMPLIFIED
TABLES
BOOKS
BOOK_AUTH
The new
tables are
now
Normalized.
Guidelines in
developing a
Database
1. Determine the purpose of the database
2. Design the tables
Design tables on paper first
Each table should contain data about one subject
Ex. Member table contains data about members only
3. Design the records and fields for each table
4. Be sure every record has a primary key
A Primary key is a key field, which uniquely
identifies each record in a file)
Use separate fields for logically distinct items
Ex. A name could be stored in six fields:
Title [Mr., Mrs., Dr., etc.]
First name
Middle Name
Last Name
Suffix [Jr., Sr., etc.]
Nickname