Imagine if someone designed our post table (omitting certain columns) in the following way:
|
Superhero Name |
Message |
Posted on |
|
Captain Temper |
Has this posted yet? |
2012/07/07 07:15 |
|
Professor English |
It should be Is not Has. |
2012/07/07 07:17 |
|
Captain Temper |
Has this posted yet? |
2012/07/07 07:18 |
|
Capt. Temper |
Has this posted yet? |
2012/07/07 07:19 |
I hope you noticed the inconsistent superhero names in the first column (and captain's consistent lack of patience).
If we were to look at the first column, we are not sure which spelling is correct — Captain Temper or Capt. Temper. This is the kind of data redundancy that we would like to eliminate through normalization.