We mentioned in class the topic of data redundancy. How does one eliminate it other than manually going through the information? Does the database management system do it for you? If so how?
I can kind of answer your question, as I had a class as an undergrad all about databases. In the case of the same data being entered twice, for instance from two different sources, this should basically be caught by the DB when it occurs.
To avoid having redundant information repeated in separate entries, on the other hand, database designers use what is called normalization -- techniques to make sure that the same data will never need to be in two different locations. The main purpose of this is not, as one might think, just to reduce the size of the database, but to reduce the possibility of errors/inconsistencies.
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I can kind of answer your question, as I had a class as an undergrad all about databases. In the case of the same data being entered twice, for instance from two different sources, this should basically be caught by the DB when it occurs.
To avoid having redundant information repeated in separate entries, on the other hand, database designers use what is called normalization -- techniques to make sure that the same data will never need to be in two different locations. The main purpose of this is not, as one might think, just to reduce the size of the database, but to reduce the possibility of errors/inconsistencies.
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