Normalisation Example

Employee and Projects

The table below depicts the requirements for a business consultancy working on local and
international projects.

Emp-No Emp- Dept Manager Proj-id Proj-Start- Location Weeks-on-Project

Name Date
005 Smith Marketing Jones A 12-93 Poole 11
B 6-94 Plymouth 15
C 09-94 Portsmouth 6
007 Bond Accounts Bloggs B 06-94 Plymouth 3
D 06-94 Berlin 9
009 King Info Systems Hurne C 09-94 Portsmouth 10
010 Holt Accounts Bloggs A 12-93 Poole 21
B 06-94 Belfast 10
D 06-94 Hamburg 12
Notes: Employees work on a number of projects concurrently. Weeks-on-project represents
the number of weeks to date that an employee has spent on a particular project. The
employee number, emp-no, and the project identifier, project-id, are unique identifiers.
The department manager, manager, is the name of the current manager, i.e., there can only
be one manager per department. A project can take place in several locations.

You are required to show the first, second and third normal forms. Explain the
normalisation process used.

Answer
First Normal Form

Relations in first normal form represent data as a set of tuples each of which is uniquely
identified by a primary key value. The most difficult part of constructing a first normal
form set of relations is identifying the primary key for each relation. It is best to select the
primary key attributes which reduce the number of attributes that repeat. An attribute
repeats when it contains two or more values for each value of the primary key. The
following guidelines should produce a set of first normal form relations.

1. Select a primary key for the set of attributes.

2. Identify the set of attributes which repeats for each value of this primary key.
3. Create a relation from the attributes which are not in the repeating group.
4. Make the key of this relation the key identified in (a).
5. Identify the primary key for the repeating group by taking each value of the
primary key in (a) and identifying a unique attribute(s) in the repeating group.