Database Implementation - Assessment Task 2

Task 2 (50 marks)

1. Design a relational database for the table fragment shown on the next page.
2. Critically evaluate normalisation as a technique for database design. For each advantage or disadvantage identified, you should use the First Bank data to illustrate and explain it. Normalisation is the process to organise data efficiently in a database. It is used for the elimination of the redundant data and ensure that the data dependcies make sense. When we store the same information redundantly, that is, to store it in more than one place within a database can lead to many problems. There are three types of anomalies that would occur when the database is not normalised.

1. Update anomalies: When a record of redundant data is updated, it would create inconsistency unless all the records are similalrly updated.
2. Insertion anomalies: It may not be possible to store certain data. If there is only a customer yet with any account or that have not initiated any payment instruction yet would have null or empty values in the row.
3. Deletion anomalies: It would not be possible to delete a record from the database without deleting some unrelated data as well. For examply, if we want to delete a payment instruction of a certain customer, its account details and customer details would also be deleted, that would cause problems.