22 Nov Having an adequate data model to serve specific business needs of an organization is important. Evaluate the need for denormalization within an organization. Provide at least three
Having an adequate data model to serve specific business needs of an organization is important.
- Evaluate the need for denormalization within an organization.
- Provide at least three examples that prove denormalization is useful to data consumers.
- Be sure to respond to at least one of your classmates' posts.
Arianna Contardo
RE: Week 7 Discussion
Top of Form
Denormalization is the process of adding data that is precomputed and redundant to an otherwise normalized relational database in order to improve read performance of the database. When it comes to normalizing a database, this involves removing redundancy so that only a single copy exists of every piece of information. In order for a database to be denormalized, it has to be normalized first.
(1)
This is a technique that is used for the purpose of improving data access performances. When a database has been normalized, and methods like indexing are not actually enough, this is when denormalization serves as a final option to speed up the retrieval of data. In this process, data is systematically combined in order to quickly get information. In this process, relations are brought down to lower than normal forms, thus, reducing the overall integrity of data. However, it increases the performance of data retrieval. Rather than performing multiple costly JOINS on many tables, normalization helps to bring together information that is logically or commonly combined. Due to lower forms, database anomalies appear. The redundancy issue finds a solution in adding software level limitations when it comes to putting data into a database.
(2)
To improve website performance, database optimization is essential. Typically, in order to do this, developers normalize a database-in other words, they restructure it in a way to enhance data integrity and reduce data redundancy. Although, sometimes normalization is not in fact enough. Therefore, in order to improve database performance even further, developers will use denormalization.
Significantly speeding up data retrieval is the main purpose of denormalization. However, it should be used for specific purposes:
-In order to enhance query performance
A normalized database typically requires the joining of many tables to fetch queries. Although, the more this happens, the slower the query. Therefore, as a countermeasure, by copying values between child and parent tables, you can add redundancy, thus, helping to reduce the amount of joins required for a query.
-Making a database more convenient to manage
There are no calculated values that are essential for applications in a normalized database. To calculate these values on the spot would require time, thus, slowing down query execution. To provide calculated values, you can denormalize a database. Once they are generated and added to tables, downstream programmers are easily able to create their own queries and reports without having any knowledge that is in depth of the apps code or API.
-Accelerating and facilitating reporting
Oftentimes, applications need to provide a lot of statistical and analytical information. Generating reports from live data is not only time consuming, but can also negatively impact the overall performance of a system. To meet this challenge, you can denormalize your database. If you needed to provide a sales summary total for one or more customers, a normalized database would aggregate and calculate all invoice details many times. This is a pretty lengthy process, so in order to help speed it up, you could maintain the year-to-date sales summary in a table storing the user details.
These features make it quite useful and appealing for data consumers.
(3)
Overall, the advantages of denormalization are:
Fewer errors- By working with a smaller number of tables, there are fewer bugs when it comes to retrieving information from a database.
Speed- Retrieving data is faster because JOIN queries are costly on a normalized database.
-Simplicity- Having a smaller number of tables makes retrieving data more straightforward
(1)
References:
1. Wright, G., & Vaughan, J. (2022). denormalization. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatamanagement/definition/denormalization
2. Dancuk, M. (2021, June 3). What Is Database Denormalization? Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://phoenixnap.com/kb/database-denormalization
3. B., G., & B., A. (2020, January 13). When and How You Should Denormalize a Relational Database. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from https://rubygarage.org/blog/database-denormalization-with-examples
Bottom of Form
