to me the first implementation seems the best, it just needed a multi column index the 3NF "optimized" form seems worse and unreadable. I would advise to norma

to me the first implementation seems the best, it just needed a multi column index the 3NF "optimized" form seems worse and unreadable. I would advise to normalize only when it's needed(complex/evolving model), in this case it was not needed