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because a normalized database repeats less things and is much easier to understand than a messy one. oh, and also, the entire point is that neither is "inheren
by bsedlm 4y ago
because a normalized database repeats less things and is much easier to understand than a messy one.
oh, and also, the entire point is that neither is "inherently better"... both have pros and cons
- pc86 4y agoI think my point was "performance" in the sense of faster response time is inherently good. All things being equal, if you have a more performant option you'll choose that. The only time you accept worse performance is in pursuit of some other metric. On the flip side, "normalization" doesn't have that same inherent good-ness. All things being equal (including performance) there isn't any inherent drive toward more normalization, maybe because a faster performing page will have clear impact to the user while a more normalized data structure would be completely transparent to the user?
- bsedlm 4y agosure, from the perspective of the final user it doesn't matter much at all. with my point about normalization being easier to understand I meant to say that it is easier for a developer learning about the schema. if I recall ok, I think there's also something about data de-duplication in a normalized database. without this normalization, you could get a lot of repetition, which would actually require to update the same data in multiple places or find some other way to deal with different data about the same entity (some sort of de-synchronization is more likely without normalized schemas). in any case, I'll grant you that normalization should never be 'the' goal for a database.