Database Normalization - Page 3

Employee table

The problem above is that Monique Williams has been awarded an hourly rate of $40, when she is actually category B, and should be earning $50 (In the case of this company, the rate category - hourly rate relationship is fixed. This may not always be the case). Once again we are storing data redundantly: the hourly rate - rate category relationship is being stored in its entirety for each employee. The solution, as before, is to remove this excess data into its own table. Formally, what we are doing is looking for transitive relationships, or relationships where a non-key attribute is dependent on another non-key relationship. Hourly rate, while being in one sense dependent on Employee number (we probably identified this dependency earlier, when looking for partial dependencies) is actually dependent on Rate category. So, we remove it, and place it in a new table, with its actual key, as follows.

Employee table

Rate table

We've cut down once again. It is now impossible to mistakenly assume rate category "B" is associated with an hourly rate of anything but $50. These relationships are only stored in once place - our new table, where it can be ensured they are accurate.