Question

I have designed my database in such a way that One of my table contains 52 columns. All the attributes are tightly associated with the primary key attribute, So there is no scope of further Normalization.

Please let me know if same kind of situation arises and you don’t want to keep so many columns in a single table, what is the other option to do that.

Answer 1

A table with fifty-two columns is not necessarily wrong. As others have pointed out many databases have such beasts. However I would not consider ERP systems as exemplars of good data design: in my experience they tend to be rather the opposite.

Anyway, moving on!

You say this:

“All the attributes are tightly associated with the primary key
attribute”

Which means that your table is in third normal form (or perhaps BCNF). That being the case it’s not true that no further normalisation is possible. Perhaps you can go to fifth normal form?

Fifth normal form is about removing join dependencies. All your columns are dependent on the primary key but there may also be dependencies between columns: e.g, there are multiple values of COL42 associated with each value of COL23. Join dependencies means that when we add a new value of COL23 we end up inserting several records, one for each value of COL42. The Wikipedia article on 5NF has a good worked example.

I admit not many people go as far as 5NF. And it might well be that even with fifty-two columns you table is already in 5NF. But it’s worth checking. Because if you can break out one or two subsidiary tables you’ll have improved your data model and made your main table easier to work with.