What is the process of organizing and refining relations within a relational database called?

The process of organizing and refining relations within a relational database is referred to as normalization. Normalization involves structuring the data in a way that reduces redundancy and ensures data integrity. This is accomplished through a series of steps that typically include dividing large tables into smaller, more manageable ones, and establishing relationships between them.

Normalization aims to eliminate potential issues like update anomalies, insertion anomalies, and deletion anomalies by ensuring that each piece of data resides in only one place within the database. By adhering to normalization principles, a database can achieve higher efficiency, minimize duplicates, and maintain consistency.

This practice is foundational in database design as it lays the groundwork for a systematic approach to managing data structures, thereby enhancing overall database performance and reliability. Other terms related to database design, such as locking, insertion anomalies, and partial functional dependency, pertain to different aspects of database management and do not address the overarching process of organizing database relations.