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Steps to Design a Database
There are various steps to design a database which are as follows:
Step 1 Determine the purpose of your database The first step of designing a database is to determine the purpose and mechanism to design and use it.
Step 2 Determine the tables Tables are one of the most important elements of a database, consist of rows and columns. To create a well-defined database, you have to keep some conditions which are as follows:
A table should not contain duplicate information.
Each table should contain information about one subject.
e.g. One table is used to contain the personal information of the students and the other is used to contain the marks scored by the student.
Step 3 Determine the fields After creating a table, you need to decide the type and number of fields required for the tables in your database. Each field in a table contains individual facts about the table’s subject.
e.g. A customer table may include company name, address, city, state and phone number fields.
Step 4 Identify the primary key in a table From the fields of table, you need to identify a primary key which uniquely identifies each individual record of the table. The primary key helps you to reduce data duplication in the table.
Step 5 Determine the relationship between tables In this step, you need to determine relationship between two or more tables in your database. You can set-up a relationship between tables on the basis of common field between them. Establishing a relationship allows you to fetch any information from both the tables.
Step 6 Refine the design After you have designed the tables, fields and relationships, its time to study the design and detect any faults that might remain.
Step 7 Enter data and create other database objects When you are satisfied that the database structure meets the goals you needed, add all your existing data to the tables.