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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 2509–2513Cite as

Normal Forms and Normalization

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Definition

A normal form defines a condition over a set of data dependencies, or semantic constraints, that has been specified as part of a database schema. This condition is used to check whether the design of the database has some desirable properties (for example, the database does not store redundant information), and if this is not the case, then it can also be used to convert the poorly designed database into an equivalent well-designed one.

Historical Background

Information is one of the most - if not the most - valuable assets of a company. Therefore, organizations need tools to allow them to structure, query and analyze their data, and, in particular, they need tools providing simple and fast access to their information.

During the last 40 years, relational databases have become the most popular computer application for storing and analyzing information. The simplicity and elegance of the relational model, where information is stored just as tables, has largely contributed to...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Marcelo Arenas

Authors
  1. Marcelo Arenas
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marcelo Arenas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

    Leonid Libkin

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Arenas, M. (2018). Normal Forms and Normalization. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_1237

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