Normalization Exercises

Normalization and E-R problem examples

This week we will walk through additional examples to give you practice
normalizing tables and drawing E-R diagrams.

Quick Review
First Normal Form: No repeating groups or multi-valued attributes
Second Normal Form: Non-key attributes must be fully functionally dependent
based on the primary key.
Third Normal Form: Eliminate transitive dependencies.
BCNF : Eliminate dependencies from the key on non-key attributes.

Normalization Examples
For the next four problems, we will indicate
a) Which normal form(s) are violated?
b) Give an example of insert, deletion, and modification anomalies associated
with the
data.
c) Present a data structure diagram showing a reorganized table structure that is
in at
least third normal form.

Problem 1
A public library keeps the following table of data about its patrons:

Which normal forms are violated?

Anomalies?
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Data structure diagram?

Problem 2
A school keeps the following information about its students:

Which normal forms are violated?

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Anomalies?

Data structure diagram?

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Problem 3
A company keeps the following table of data about orders.

Which normal forms are violated?

Anomalies?
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Data structure diagram?

Extra Problem) A video store uses the following table to keep track of movies.
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Can you suggest a better primary key to uniquely identify a movie? (Ok to add
attributes)

Which normal forms are violated?

Anomalies?

Data structure diagram? 1NF and then 2NF.

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A Movie ID would help us here in many ways! E.g., saving space for redundant
data.

Problem 4
The following set of data represents a sample of the types of data used by a clerk
in a
library. The clerk also indicates that there can be borrowers who do not have a
book
checked out and books that have not yet been checked out. All other
relationships are
mandatory. Draw an ER diagram and a set of domain descriptions for this user
view.
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Data Domain Descriptions:

Problem 5
Based on the following document and description, create an E-R diagram for the
data of
this user’s view and the domain description.
Registration clerk: I produce the class schedule report you see here. Each
student is sent
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a copy of his/her class schedule. Some restrictions, which may not be obvious
from the
sample data, should be noted. The advisor assigned to a student must be a
professor in
the department in which the student is majoring (a CIS major must be advised by
a CIS
professor). Course numbers consist of a 3-digit alphabetic prefix followed by 3
numeric
digits. The alphabetic prefix must correspond to a valid department code.

E-R Diagrams:
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Domain description:
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