Designing Efficient Databases
Database design is about balancing speed (performance) and organization (normalization). Interviewers want to know if you can structure data to avoid redundancy without making queries too slow.
Core Concepts
- Normalization: The process of organizing data to reduce redundancy. 1NF (Atomic values), 2NF (No partial dependencies), 3NF (No transitive dependencies).
- Indexing: A data structure (like a B-Tree) that improves the speed of data retrieval operations on a table at the cost of additional storage space.
- Primary vs Foreign Key: A Primary Key uniquely identifies a record. A Foreign Key links to a Primary Key in another table to establish a relationship.