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Informix Guide to SQL: Tutorial
Chapter 8: Building Your Data Model
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Building Your Data Model

Why Build a Data Model
Entity-Relationship Data-Model Overview
Identifying and Defining Your Principal Data Objects
Discovering Entities
Choosing Possible Entities
Pruning Your List of Entities
The Telephone-Directory Example
Diagramming Your Entities
Defining the Relationships
Connectivity
Existence Dependency
Cardinality
Discovering the Relationships
Diagramming Your Relationships
Identifying Attributes
Selecting Attributes for Your Entities
Listing Your Attributes
About Entity Occurrences
Diagramming Your Data Objects
Reading Entity-Relationship Diagrams
The Telephone-Directory Example
Translating E-R Data Objects into Relational Constructs
Rules for Defining Tables, Rows, and Columns
Placing Constraints on Columns
Determining Keys for Tables
Primary Keys
Foreign Keys (Join Columns)
Adding Keys to the Telephone-Directory Diagram
Resolving Your Relationships
Resolving m:n Relationships
Resolving Other Special Relationships
Normalizing Your Data Model
First Normal Form
Second Normal Form
Third Normal Form
Summary of Normalization Rules
Summary



Informix Guide to SQL: Tutorial, version 9.1
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