Data Modeling and Normalization

The Wikipedia article on data modeling was a little hard to get through. I understood it better when I read the article Data Modeling: Finding the Perfect Fit and it talked about entities more clearly. Then it really helped when I read about the ERD. The UACBT-VTC MySQL videos were helpful too. I didn’t get everything about the ERD though. I understood the crow’s feet and the O. But when it started getting into lines and dashes, I got a little confused. The Entity Relationship Diagram Example was helpful, but I was still confused some. I just need to practice.

For normalization, the UACBT-VTC MySQL videos were pretty easy to understand. But when I got to the Wikipedia article, I had no clue what it was talking about. The University of Texas page on normalization was a little confusing, but I started to understand it better. Then the Database Normalization Pt 1 and Database Normalization Pt 2 were really helpful. Part 1 summarized the benefits right away and talked about the primary key right away, instead of waiting until later to say how important it was. It made it seem simple, but maybe that’s because I had already read several things by then. The Three Normal Forms tutorial was a little hard to look at. I had to scroll up and down to see the spreadsheet and then read about it. It is nice that it is provided as a pdf. I saved it and might print it in order to read it better. But I liked that it showed a real spreadsheet. That was helpful.

I think I need to reread some articles and I think that something like this really takes experience to understand completely. I understood somewhat because of working with Access and trying to create a database. It’s hard work and a lot of thinking and planning. Data modeling and normalization helped me to understand why it’s so hard and why it’s important to really plan the database out well before creating it.