Database Normalization using Foreign Key - sql

Question

I have a sample table like below where Course Completion Status of a Student is being stored:
Create Table StudentCourseCompletionStatus
(
CourseCompletionID int primary key identity(1,1),
StudentID int not null,
AlgorithmCourseStatus nvarchar(30),
DatabaseCourseStatus nvarchar(30),
NetworkingCourseStatus nvarchar(30),
MathematicsCourseStatus nvarchar(30),
ProgrammingCourseStatus nvarchar(30)
)
Insert into StudentCourseCompletionStatus Values (1, 'In Progress', 'In Progress', 'Not Started', 'Completed', 'Completed')
Insert into StudentCourseCompletionStatus Values (2, 'Not Started', 'In Progress', 'Not Started', 'Not Applicable', 'Completed')
Now as part of normalizing the schema I have created two other tables - CourseStatusType and Status for storing the Course Status names and Status.
Create Table CourseStatusType
(
CourseStatusTypeID int primary key identity(1,1),
CourseStatusType nvarchar(100) not null
)
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('AlgorithmCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('DatabaseCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('NetworkingCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('MathematicsCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('ProgrammingCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('OperatingSystemsCourseStatus')
Insert into CourseStatusType Values ('CompilerCourseStatus')
Create Table Status
(
StatusID int primary key identity(1,1),
StatusName nvarchar (100) not null
)
Insert into Status Values ('Completed')
Insert into Status Values ('Not Started')
Insert into Status Values ('In Progress')
Insert into Status Values ('Not Applicable')
The modified table is as below:
Create Table StudentCourseCompletionStatus1
(
CourseCompletionID int primary key identity(1,1),
StudentID int not null,
CourseStatusTypeID int not null CONSTRAINT [FK_StudentCourseCompletionStatus1_CourseStatusType] FOREIGN KEY (CourseStatusTypeID) REFERENCES dbo.CourseStatusType (CourseStatusTypeID),
StatusID int not null CONSTRAINT [FK_StudentCourseCompletionStatus1_Status] FOREIGN KEY (StatusID) REFERENCES Status (StatusID),
)
I have few question on this:
Is this the correct way to normalize it ? The old table was very helpful to get data easily - I can store a student's course status in a single row, but now 5 rows are required. Is there a better way to do it?
Moving the data from the old table to this new table seems to be not an easy task. Can I achieve this using a query or I have to manually to do this ?
Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

vou could also consider storing results in flat table like this:
studentID,courseID,status
1,1,"completed"
1,2,"not started"
2,1,"not started"
2,3,"in progress"
you will also need additional Courses table like this
courserId,courseName
1, math
2, programming
3, networking
and a students table
students
1 "john smith"
2 "perry clam"
3 "john deere"
etc..you could also optionally create a status table to store the distinct statusstrings statusstings and refer to their PK instead ofthestrings
studentID,courseID,status
1,1,1
1,2,2
2,1,2
2,3,3
... etc
and status table
id,status
1,"completed"
2,"not started"
3,"in progress"
the beauty of this representation is: it is quite easy to filter and aggregate data , i.e it is easy to query which subjects a particular person have completed, how many subjects are completed by an average student, etc. this things are much more difficult in the columnar design like you had. you can also easily add new subjects without the need to adapt your tables or even queries they,will just work.
you can also always usin SQLs PIVOT query to get it to a familiar columnar presentation like
name,mathstatus,programmingstatus,networkingstatus,etc..

Answer 2

but now 5 rows are required
No, it's still just one row. That row simply contains identifiers for values stored in other tables.
There are pros and cons to this. One of the main reasons to normalize in this way is to protect the integrity of the data. If a column is just a string then anything can be stored there. But if there's a foreign key relationship to a table containing a finite set of values then only one of those options can be stored there. Additionally, if you ever want to change the text of an option or add/remove options, you do it in a centralized place.
Moving the data from the old table to this new table seems to be not an easy task.
No problem at all. Create your new numeric columns on the data table and populate them with the identifiers of the lookup table records associated with each data table record. If they're nullable, you can make them foreign keys right away. If they're not nullable then you need to populate them before you can make them foreign keys. Once you've verified that the data is correct, remove the old de-normalized columns. Done.

Answer 3

In StudentCourseCompletionStatus1 you still need 2 associations to Status and CourseStatusType. So I think you should consider following variant of normalization:
It means, that your StudentCourseCompletionStatus would hold only one CourseStatusID and another table CourseStatus would hold the associations to CourseType and Status.
To move your data you can surely use a query.