Relational schema design

In relational databases, we design with the goal of avoiding data anomalies and data redundancy.

Data anomalies can happen when we have the same information stored in multiple columns; we update one of them but not the rest and so end up with conflicting information for the same column of information.

Another example of a data anomaly is when we cannot delete a row without losing the information that we need, possibly in other rows referenced by it.

Data redundancy on the other hand refers to a situation where our data is not in a normal form but has duplicate data across different tables. This can lead to data inconsistency and make the data integrity difficult to maintain.

In relational databases, we use normal forms to normalize our data. Starting from the basic first normal form (1NF), onto the second normal form (2NF), third normal form (3NF), and Boyce-Codd normal form (BCNF), there are different ways to model our data. We structure our...