bdfd1m0dDatabase Administration


Optimizing the Database Design

As you have seen in Chapter 1, the process of normalization has imposed a preliminary order on your data. Unnecessary duplications have been removed and the data is clearly set out in a readily comprehensible form.

However, tables that are rigidly normalized do not always produce the best results from a performance point of view. Retrieval speeds can often be improved when the same data is held in different tables.

Figure 1 shows the current structure of the database.

Figure 1. Four Normalized Tables