George Bowyer
Registered User.
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- Joined
- May 17, 2004
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Hi.
A few questions about normalising (and yes I did search first, but it's rather a general search term...)
1) If normalising is so important, why aren't Northwind and wizard-built dbs normalised?
2) Can anyone direct me towards a good idiot's guide to normalisation?
3) Can anyone point me toards a good example database that is normalised? What would be really useful would be one that contains both a normalised and non-normalised structure for comparison.
4) In my case, my amateur built db started life some 6 years ago and has grown into a huge amorphous blob that does pretty much exactly what I want it to, but is no doubt about as far from normalised as it would be possible to get (its essentially a name-and-address book, and my main table has 37 fields in it! Loads of duplicated infoprmation all over the place...).
(i) Is it possible to "retrospectively" normalise a db that has been going for years, or is normalisation something that has to be done from inception?
(ii) If it can be done, how would one go about it?
(iii) As my db is pretty small-beer: only dealing with a couple of thousand contact records for one small club; operating soleley on one computer; is it really worth the hassle?
Thanks
George
A few questions about normalising (and yes I did search first, but it's rather a general search term...)
1) If normalising is so important, why aren't Northwind and wizard-built dbs normalised?
2) Can anyone direct me towards a good idiot's guide to normalisation?
3) Can anyone point me toards a good example database that is normalised? What would be really useful would be one that contains both a normalised and non-normalised structure for comparison.
4) In my case, my amateur built db started life some 6 years ago and has grown into a huge amorphous blob that does pretty much exactly what I want it to, but is no doubt about as far from normalised as it would be possible to get (its essentially a name-and-address book, and my main table has 37 fields in it! Loads of duplicated infoprmation all over the place...).
(i) Is it possible to "retrospectively" normalise a db that has been going for years, or is normalisation something that has to be done from inception?
(ii) If it can be done, how would one go about it?
(iii) As my db is pretty small-beer: only dealing with a couple of thousand contact records for one small club; operating soleley on one computer; is it really worth the hassle?
Thanks
George