CISSP Practice Exam 2026 – Complete Prep Guide

Normalization is the process that aims to organize data within a database to minimize redundancy and dependency, leading to a logically concise and consistent structure. This process typically involves dividing large tables into smaller ones and defining relationships between them. By organizing data in this way, normalization helps to eliminate data anomalies that can arise from insertions, updates, or deletions.

The primary goal of normalization is to ensure that each piece of data is stored in the database only once, which contributes to data integrity and simpler database management. It employs standard forms, such as the First Normal Form (1NF), Second Normal Form (2NF), and Third Normal Form (3NF), to progressively reduce redundancy while enhancing data consistency.

In contrast, processes like denormalization involve intentionally introducing redundancy to improve performance for specific queries, which is not the focus of normalization. Encoding relates to transforming data into a specific format for transmission or storage, and validation is primarily about ensuring data meets certain criteria or formats when being entered into the system. Therefore, normalization is the most relevant process for making data logically concise and consistent within a database.