Question

I am trying to understand database normalization, in particular 3NF.

I am building a shop database and in trying to normalize to 3NF have come up with the structure below.

The structure below assumes

• There may be multiple categories per product
• There is only ever one storage_location & manufacturer per product
• There may be unlimited extra_fields

Can anybody tell me if I am on the right track, is the below structure in 3NF, or close?

Products
----------------
pid (pk)
title
desc
price
weight_base
weight_additional
note
quantity
manufacturer_id (fk)
storage_location_id (fk)

Categories
-----------------
category_id (pk)
category_name
parent_id
description

Product_categories
-----------------
pid (pk)
category_id (pk)

Manufacturers
-------------------
manufacturer_id (pk)
name
description

Storage_locations
---------------------

storage_location_id (pk)
storage_ref
storage_note

Product_extra_field_values
-----------------------------------

PID (pk)
extra_id (fk)
value

Product_extra_fields
--------------------------------

extra_id (pk)
label

Two main things I am unsure about:

1. Is it correct to use a composite key for Product_categories to accommodate for multiple identical PIDs in the table?

2. Is it correct to simply add a foreign key to the primary Products table for manufacturer and storage_location because they will only occur once per product record? Or should specific manufacturer and storage_location id be removed from primary Products table and new tables be created like this:

   Product_storage_locations
   ----------------------------------
   PID (pk)
   storage_location_id (pk) 
   

Answer 1

Yes, what you have looks correct to me. What you’ve done with putting product storage location and manufacturer in the Products table is absolutely correct. If you put it in a separate table (down the bottom), you’ll just be creating more work for yourself with all the joins you’ll have to do later.

The only reason you would split that out into a new Product_storage_locations table is if a product could be in multiple locations (which, according to what you’ve said, is not the case). However, in the case of products and categories, that is what you want to do – and that’s what you’ve done with the Product_categories table; and is absolutely the right thing to do.

The only thing I’m not sure about in your design is how you’ve done extra fields. Without more information about your intent, it’s hard to say whether what you’ve done is right or not. It looks to me, though, that what you have is a particular type of field which may apply to many products; but whereby each of those products may have a different value for that field. If that is your intent, then that design looks fine.