When spreadsheets aren’t good enough: A lesson in relational databases

Database normalization, relational databases, and why you need them

Summary

Repository for Towards Data Science article: "When spreadsheets aren’t good enough: A lesson in relational databases". Includes follow-along SQL code to demonstrate how to structure relational databases using MySQL.

Contents

1. Table Creation and Loading

   • create_tables.sql - creation of synthetic customer and email databases
   • data_input.sql - data input to customer and email tables with artificial data

2. Normal Forms

   • first_normal_form.sql - code used to transform databases into 1NF
   • second_normal_form.sql - code used to transform databases into 2NF
   • third_normal_form.sql - code used to transform databases into 3NF

3. Queries

   • queries.sql - SQL queries that retrieve information of customers and email prospects to target

Software

• MySQL

Note: this code can be adapted to work with the SQL server of your choice.