Confirming Analysis › Checking for Correctness › Normalization

Normalization

Normalization is a step-by-step process used to ensure that you have assigned each attribute to the proper entity type and defined sufficient entity types. This technique is more fully described in the chapter titled "Analyzing Data."

Normalization can be verified based on understanding what users accept are the functional dependencies of attributes. Without using normalization terminology, you check with users to ensure that:

• Every attribute is dependent upon the key (1NF), the whole key (2NF), and nothing but the key (3NF).
• Every collection of attributes is a 3NF entity type.
• Every entity type is a 3NF collection of attributes.