Database Normalization In Access 2010

Database normalization, or simply normalization, is the process of organizing columns (attributes) and tables (relations) of a relational database to minimize data redundancy. It is the process of splitting data across multiple tables to improve overall performance, integrity and longevity.

Normalization is the process of organizing data in a database.

This includes creating tables and establishing relationships between those tables according to rules designed both to protect the data and to make the database more flexible by eliminating redundancy and inconsistent dependency.

Let us now look into the following table which contains data, but the problem is that this data is quite redundant which increases the chances of typo and inconsistent phrasing during data entry.

To solve this problem, we need to restructure our data and break it down into multiple tables to eliminate some of those redundancy as shown in the following three tables.

Here, we have one table for Customers, the 2nd one is for Orders and the 3rd one is for Cookies.

The problem here is that just by splitting the data in multiple tables will not help to tell how data from one table relates to data in another table. To connect data in multiple tables, we have to add foreign keys to the Orders table.