Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

DeNormalization
Lecture 12
Fahad Maqbool
Department of Computer Science

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Balance Between Good & Evil

De-normalization Normalization
Too many tables
4+ Normal Forms

3rd Normal Form

2nd Normal Form

Data Cubes 1st Normal Form

Data Lists

Flat Table One big flat file

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

What is DeNormalization?
• It is not chaos, more like a “controlled crash” with the aim of
performance enhancement without loss of information.

• Normalization is a rule of thumb in DBMS, but in DSS ease of use is

achieved by way of denormalization.

• De-normalization comes in many flavors, such as combining tables,

splitting tables, adding data etc., but all done very carefully.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

What is DeNormalization?
• Bringing “close” dispersed but related data items.

• Query performance in DSS significantly dependent on physical data

model.

• Very early studies showed performance difference in orders of magnitude

for different number de-normalized tables and rows per table.

• The level of de-normalization should be carefully considered.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

DeNormalization Improves Performance

• De-normalization specifically improves performance by either:

• Reducing the number of tables and hence the reliance on joins, which
consequently speeds up performance.

• Reducing the number of joins required during query execution, or

• Reducing the number of rows to be retrieved from the Primary Data

Table.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

DeNormalization Guidelines
• Carefully do a cost-benefit analysis (frequency of use, additional
storage, join time).

• Do a data requirement and storage analysis.

• Weigh against the maintenance issue of the redundant data (triggers

used).

• When in doubt, don’t denormalize.

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

• Dealing with the abundance of star schemas.

• Fast access to time series data for analysis.

• Fast aggregate (sum, average, etc.) results and complicated calculations.

• Multidimensional analysis (e.g., geography) in a complex hierarchy.

• Dealing with few updates but many join queries.

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Five DeNormalization Principles

1. Collapsing Tables.
a. Two entities with a One-to-One relationship.
b. Two entities with a Many-to-Many relationship.

2. Splitting Tables (Horizontal/Vertical Splitting).

3. Pre-Joining.

4. Adding Redundant Columns (Reference Data).

5. Derived Attributes (Summary, Total, Balance etc).

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

ColA ColB
Collapsing Tables
denormalized

ColA ColB ColC

normalized

ColA ColC

 Reduced storage space.

 Reduced update time.

 Does not changes business view.

 Reduced foreign keys.

 Reduced indexing.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023
Table Table_v1 Table_v2

Splitting ColA ColB ColC ColA ColB ColA ColC

Vertical Split
Table_h1 Table_h2

ColA ColB ColC ColA ColB ColC

Horizontal split
University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Horizontal Splitting
• Breaks a table into multiple tables based upon common column
values. Example: Campus specific queries.

• GOAL

• Spreading rows for exploiting parallelism.

• Grouping data to avoid unnecessary query load in WHERE clause.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Horizontal Splitting: Advantages

• Enhance security of data.

• Organizing tables differently for different queries.

• Graceful degradation of database in case of table damage.

• Fewer rows result in flatter B-trees and fast data retrieval.

University of Sargodha
 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Vertical Splitting
• Infrequently accessed columns become extra “baggage” thus degrading
performance.

• Very useful for rarely accessed large text columns with large headers.

• Header size is reduced, allowing more rows per block, thus reducing I/O.

• Splitting and distributing into separate files with repeating primary key.

• For an end user, the split appears as a single table through a view.

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Pre Joining
• Identify frequent joins and append the tables together in the physical
data model.

• Generally used for 1:M such as master-detail. RI is assumed to exist.

• Additional space is required as the master information is repeated in

the new header table.

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023
Master

Pre Joining Sale_ID Sale_date Sale_person

normalized
1 M
Tx_ID Sale_ID Item_ID Item_Qty Sale_Rs Detail

Tx_ID Sale_ID Sale_date Sale_person Item_ID Item_Qty Sale_Rs

denormalized

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 Advance Database Management System – Fall 2023

Pre Joining
• Typical of Market basket query

• Join ALWAYS required

• Tables could be millions of rows

• Squeeze Master into Detail

• Repetition of facts. How much?

• Detail 3-4 times of master

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