Summary

This chapter gives you a kick-start on designing relational databases that can perform better, be easier to maintain, and be more successful. That's usually an unspoken goal of any database application project. Unless it's successful, you'll either be back working on it when you should be home relaxing or be out looking for another jobwithout a good recommendation from your last employer. I talked about both formal rules and informal suggestions to normalize your database. Understand that few of these rules are cast in stone, but until you fully understand them, the databases you (and your team) design and implement, populate and test, and polish and deploy won't keep bread on the table.