Denormalization Patterns

Monday, April 28. 2008

Denormalization Patterns

A denormalized database is one that has been meticulously normalized to eliminate redundancies, only to have redundancies deliberately put back in to meet other needs. That is the kind of database we are going to talk about today.

By contrast, a database is "non-normalized" if nobody ever bothered to normalize it. This is what you get when the programmer says, "I'm not concerned with the table structure yet, I'm working on the code first." In my experience this is something like saying, "I'm not worried about the plan for this work bench I'm building, I'm just going to throw the wood on the table saw and start cutting." We are not interested in non-normalized databases.