What is normalization in database management?

Normalization is a critical process in database management that aims to structure a relational database in a way that minimizes redundancy and the potential for anomalies during data operations. This process involves organizing data into related tables and establishing relationships between them, which helps ensure that each piece of information is stored only once. By doing so, normalization eliminates the likelihood of inconsistency when updates occur, as changes need to be made in just one place instead of multiple locations.

For instance, if you have customer data and order data in a single table, each time an address changes, that change needs to be made for every order associated with that customer. Through normalization, these two types of data can be split into separate tables with a relationship defined, thereby reducing the chances of leaving behind outdated records and enhancing data integrity.

While sorting data entries, increasing database size, and creating backup records are all important aspects of database management, they do not directly address the main goal of normalization. Sorting data deals with how data is organized for retrieval, increasing size pertains to data capacity, and backup processes are related to data protection. Normalization specifically focuses on the structure and relationship of data to promote efficiency and accuracy.