What is the process of organizing data to minimize redundancy and remove ambiguity by separating a DB into tables and defining relationships?

• A. Normalization
• B. Denormalization
• C. Indexing
• D. Partitioning

Answer: (A)

Normalization is the process of organizing data to minimize redundancy and remove ambiguity by splitting data into related tables and defining relationships through keys. By breaking a large, single table into smaller, linked tables, each fact is stored in one place, and connections between data are made with primary keys and foreign keys. This reduces update anomalies and helps ensure data consistency when you add, change, or delete information. For example, keep customers in a separate table and reference them from orders via a CustomerID, rather than repeating customer details on every order.

Denormalization, on the other hand, deliberately introduces redundancy to speed up reads by reducing joins. Indexing speeds up data retrieval but doesn’t change how data is organized to eliminate duplication. Partitioning splits data into separate storage areas for performance or manageability but doesn’t directly restructure data to remove redundancy.