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Denormalising for a live results screen
5 marksYou mark it yourself against the marking points
A school sports day database is in third normal form, with separate tables for Student, House, Event and Result. A big screen shows each house's running total of points, refreshed every few seconds. Each refresh joins all four tables and adds up every result, and the screen has started to lag.
The database designer suggests adding a total_points column to the House table, updated each time a result is entered.
(a) State what denormalisation is. [1]
(b) Evaluate the designer's suggestion. [4]
[5]