Path: text.usenetserver.com!out01a.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in02.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!postnews.google.com!x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: raylopez99 Newsgroups: comp.databases.theory Subject: Newbie question about db normalization theory: redundant keys OK? Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 14:26:36 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 19 Message-ID: <15b312ea-1f66-4f22-abbb-63581e0eca73@x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 85.75.207.53 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1197498397 23466 127.0.0.1 (12 Dec 2007 22:26:37 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:26:37 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: x69g2000hsx.googlegroups.com; posting-host=85.75.207.53; posting-account=fRZa_AkAAACE3nlFA9zM1Eq00OKq1Ycq User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Opera/9.24 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en),gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Xref: usenetserver.com comp.databases.theory:168074 X-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:26:37 EST (text.usenetserver.com) With a few hours of theory under my belt, I'd like to ask if there's ever a time that you don't want a completely normalized dB, that is, a normalized database being a dB that has no redundant information (my understanding of what a normalized database is). Or, is there ever a time that you want redundant keys (that is, the same keys in many different tables, that obviously are not linked (in a relationship) between two tables?). Having redundant attributes and/ or keys seems to me a very lazy way of designing a database that doesn't require lots of initial thought, but of course you have to pay for it by meticulously "synching" all redundant keys to one another everytime there is a change in one of the redundant keys, so the keys don't drift and have different values. But is there ever a time you want to do this? THanks in advance RL