Third normal form (3NF) eliminates non-key attributes that do not describe the Primary Key.
For a relation to be in 3NF, the relationship between any two non-Primary Key columns, or groups of columns, in the relation must not be one-to-one in either direction.
Attributes are mutually independent if none of them are functionally dependent on any combination of the others. Mutual independence ensures that you can update individual attributes without affecting any other attribute in a row.
Implementing a normalized logical model in 3NF has the following benefits:
- Greater number of relations
- More PI choices
- Optimal distribution of data
- Fewer full table scans